North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has ordered infrastructure upgrades and farmland development to increase food production.
As he adjourned the seventh enlarged plenary meeting of the strong Central Committee of the ruling Workers' Party on Wednesday (March 1), Kim announced orders to upgrade irrigation systems, construct contemporary farming equipment, and expand arable land.
Kim said his government sees agricultural development as a matter of “strategic” importance and that farming goals should be settled without fail, according to the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
Due in part to what it claimed was the failure of a new grain policy prohibiting private agricultural transactions, South Korea has warned of a growing food crisis in the isolated North, including a recent rise in deaths from starvation in some places, leading to famine.
Why is North Korea experiencing famine?
Floods, typhoons, sanctions related to its nuclear and missile programmes, and a dramatic fall in commerce with China due to border closures and Covid-19 lockdowns have all severely harmed North Korea's economy.
The North's crop production decreased by more than four per cent from the previous year, according to South Korea's rural development agency, which cited heavy summer rains and other economic factors.
According to the official KCNA news agency, Kim outlined plans and detailed duties to create “rich and highly civilised socialist rural communities with advanced technology and modern civilisation”.
According to the agency, he ordered an overhaul of the irrigation system to address climate change, the creation of productive farming equipment to modernise production, and the reclamation of tidelands to increase farming space.
According to analysts, the absence of proper agricultural infrastructure, equipment, and supplies, such as gasoline and fertiliser, has left North Korea more susceptible to natural disasters.
Since the 1980s, the mountainous nation has attempted to increase the amount of arable land by tideland reclamation along its west coast, although prior attempts failed in part due to subpar engineering and upkeep.
Reclamation initiatives have been somewhat more effective under Kim, but with little progress being made in turning coastal mudflats into productive farmland, they accomplished nothing to alleviate food shortages, according to the US-based 38 North project in late 2021.
