농지 제도 및 이용구조의 변화와 제도개선에 관한 연구

농지제도와 이용구조의 변화 및 제도 개선방안을 연구한다.

It is no exaggeration to mention that the "land to the Tillers" principle and the land-owning farming system, which had been established as a fundamental ideal of the farmland system since the 1950 Land Reform, have been already broken down in reality. The size of leased land is 43.6% of total farmland, and tenant farm households take 72.3% of all farm households in 2000. there are institutional and economic reasons for it.

Institutionally, the land-owning farming system has not been able to last not only because it was as late as in 1994 when the Korean National Assembly enacted the "Agricultural Land Act"; but because the act has approved all the land ownership by non-farmers and land tenancy that had been occurred before the act, and the land inheritance, donation, and the landownership by those who left the villages as well. Economically, economic growth has resulted in the expanded diversion of land use, which has in turn brought out higher sale price of farmland compared to the price converted from the land cultivation returns.

thous non-farmers who try to earn capital gain have expanded land purchase and ownership while farmers have more and more difficulties in buying farmlands with agricultural income only. Land lease has functioned to be powerful means for farmland expansion. Larger farmers and/ or younger farmers have higher proportion of leased lands of total cultivating lands and bigger area of leased lands. Despite this, however, land-owning farmers are superior to the leased farmers with respect to the stability and soundness of agricultural management as well as the household income.

Leased farmers are difficult to invest in land improvement of in fixed capital, and have hard times in doing stable operation with long-term management plans. Therefor, it cannot be said that farmers prefer land tenancy to land purchase; but farmers borrow lands because of too high land price. then, the farmland price, which had been a major factor of land lease expansion, has dropped since the latter half of 2001. It is because of the over-supply and over-plus of rice which resulted in the drop of rice price and so the agricultural income.

Farmers demanded, as a measure against the land price drop, that the state remove of lessen the regulation over farmland ownership and use; the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry amended the Farmland Act to allow for land ownership by non-farmers(at most 300 pyong) and by agricultural corporation. It is expected that the price of farmland will continue to fall; it is because that the price of agricultural products and agricultural income will decline due to the increased agricultural market access from abroad, and more and more land will be supplied while land demand will be reduced due to the accelerated increase of old-aged farmers and the lack of successors in farm households.

Farmland is not only a means of agricultural production and assets maintenance but a credit base. In case land price declines, its value as a means of assets maintenance and credit base drops although its value as a production means goes up. There is a possibility that farmers lose means to repay debts, which would cause the insolvency of agricultural financial institutes. Some measures are in need to counter the long-term decline of land price. It is not desirable to allow for the land-ownership by non-farmers; because it may cause speculative demands for land in some particular regions, while being unable to expand demands for land in the rest pure rural area.

Considering the need to expand the size of cultivating land, the superiority of land-owning farmers to the leased farmers, the problem of land price decline, the task to hold back speculative land ownership and orderless diversion of land use, the bringing up of full-time farmers as backbone of farmland preservation and agricultural management, and so forth, the following policy measures and tasks are in order: First, the maintenance of the "Land to the Tillers" principle and the suppression of agricultural land-ownership by non-farmers, Second, the promotion of land lease between farmers and the creation of managing body for farmland tenancy, Third, the expansion of the "Program of Cultivating Land Expansion" and the introduction of "Agricultural land Bank" which would support land purchase by full-time farmers or new farmers, Fourth, the prevention of diversion of small dispersed lands' usage and the redemption of gains from diversion, and Last, the compensation for Farmland conservation.