농지소유 및 임대차제도 개선방안에 관한 연구

농지 소유 및 임대차제도의 개선 방안을 연구했다.

The land-to-the-tiller principle has always been flexibly adapted to the specific conditions of the time; it is more important to revise and complement the principle to each and every current situation. This also acts as a basic principle for sounding out methods to activate a leasing system to efficiently use farmland. In this regard, it is significant to clarify the definition of tiller and to expand the scope of the definition. First, ideally, a tiller should refer to a person who manages a farm according to his/her responsibility and at his/her cost, not a person who does the farm work, fully or partially, by him/herself.

Farm management in modern times is not confined to farming by the input of labor; the establishment of a plan to input agricultural machinery, facilities, and labor for production and a strategy of marketing and sales activities to sell the products is another important key to the success of farm management. When a tiller or a farmer is defined as above, however, the number of so-called absentee landowners, who live at a long distance from their farmland and hire neighborhood labor to manage their farms, might increase. Thus, we need a countermeasure to handle this problem.

For example, it is recommended that any landowners who live at a distance beyond 30 km from their farmland (based on the commuting distance) and are to newly acquire farmland should be forced to make farming their main business and to manage their farms in a way that maximizes productivity. It is also recommended that they should dispose of their farmland in case that they fail to use their farmland reasonably. In this case, it would be desirable to set an upper limit of 30 to 50 ha of farmland per owner for policy goals.

Second, we need to extend the coverage of the term tiller to any kind of corporation whose main businesses include the production, processing and sales of agricultural products and to force them to dispose of their farmland if they stop farm management. Corporations have become one of the most important economic actors in modern society and incorporated businesses are the most typical type. As farm management is one of the most important economic activities, there is no reason to restrict the ownership of farmland to any corporation whose main business is farm management.

Thus, the conditions specified under the Agricultural Land Act that at least a third of the executive directors who hold the right to conduct the business management of an agricultural corporation should be farmers needs to be abolished. In this case, however, it is necessary to force them to dispose of their own farmland when they’re not engaged in farm management any longer. In addition, a complementary measure is needed to ban any conversion of farmland into other areas within a certain period after the farmland has been purchased. When integrating farmland into a farm, it is necessary to prevent it from being divided up in order to ensure that benefits are gained from a large scale farm.

Currently, both the central and the municipal governments in Korea have been encouraged to give the necessary support so that a farmer or an agricultural corporation can inherit, have donated or be assigned with farmland collectively in order to prevent such land fragmentation (Article 22, Agricultural Land Act). However, there is no legal ground for the effective implementation of this under the current relevant tax laws.

Therefore, there is a need to establish a legal ground for the lump-sum inheritance system of a farm under the relevant laws to ensure that an agricultural business operator, who is one of the co-heirs to a piece of land, can inherit the entire pieces of land or farm while the other co-heirs can receive the appraised value of their shares in cash. The farmland that can be subject to this kind of lump-sum inheritance system should be constituted as a farm as a whole, or be close to or connected to each other so that it is more efficient to manage them together.

In order to settle the lump-sum inheritance system, it is necessary to consider the exemption from gift tax or inheritance tax on farmland which has been used for agriculture for more than five years. In order to further activate the lease of farmland, the provisions in relation to the terms of lease agreement, which are likely to be subject to legal disputes under the Agricultural Land Act such as a notice period for agreement cancellation, succession and cancellation of lease agreement, and the adjustment of rent, need to be complemented.

Though the terms of the lease for farmland is longer than three years under the current lease agreements, I propose that it should instead be twenty years for farm management which included the building of glass greenhouses, ten years for the building of vinyl greenhouses and five years for outdoor culture as agreement terms, considering the economical lifecycle of machines and facilities. However, I propose some requirements for any agreement cancellation to prevent any infringement of the lessors’ rights, which may occur according to the introduction of a long-term leasing system.

For the notice period for an agreement cancellation, I propose that the cancellation of a lease agreement by the lessor should be notified one year prior in writing in order to guarantee stable farm management for the lessee and to respect the special nature of agricultural activities. I also propose that a provision for the succession of the status of the lessee should be added in the event of the death of the lessee. Furthermore, in the case of the succession of the right of lease by an heir a certain standard of qualification should be presented and this should include the term of participation of the heir in the farm management process in order to ensure consistent farm management.

In addition, I propose that a provision should be added, based on which the lessee may request the cancellation of the lease agreement with the assigne