South, North Korea reach agreement in farm talks
Fri 19 Aug 2005
SEOUL, Aug 20 (Reuters) - South Korea has agreed to provide farming technology and to set up joint agricultural projects with North Korea to ease chronic food shortages there that stem from the communist state's beleaguered farm sector.
The two sides reached the agreement when they re-convened late on Friday night after earlier talks ended in a deadlock, according to pool reports.
Agricultural experts have said North Korea needs immediate food and fertiliser assistance to ease food shortages, but it also has to overhaul farming methods to produce enough food to feed its 22.5 million people.
The meeting in the North Korean city of Kaesong was the first time the two sides had held joint agricultural talks.
Seoul also agreed to provide fertiliser, pesticides as well as new equipment, according to the pool reports.
South Korea has sent hundreds of thousands of tonnes of rice and fertiliser to the North over the past several years as humanitarian aid to help the North battle its chronic food shortages. South Korea recently agreed to provide 500,000 tonnes of rice to North Korea this year.
About a million people in North Korea died in the 1990s because of a famine.
North Korea's agricultural sector has been hit by the country's economic difficulties brought about by the loss of communist trading partners after the end of the Cold War.
It also faces economic isolation because of international concerns about its leadership and pursuit of nuclear weapons.
An expert on North Korea's agricultural sector has said the system is steeped in inefficiencies and plagued by a lack of resources.
Food production rose to an annual 4.5 million tonnes in the late 1980s before the end of the Cold War, but shrank to 2.75 million tonnes by 2000. It has since risen again, reaching 4.24 million tonnes in 2004, according to the South's Korea Rural Economic Institute.
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