[Feature] Korean Agricultural ODA ② Suggestions for Korea’s ODA from Kwon Taek-yoon, Former Director General of the Rural Development Administration’s Technology Cooperation Bureau

More than half of the food consumed by Koreans comes from overseas. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs’ Key Statistics on Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs 2025, as of 2024 Korea’s domestic food self-sufficiency rate stood at 47.9%, while its grain self-sufficiency rate (including consumption for feed) remained at 21.6%. It is a structure in which domestic food prices fluctuate whenever climate change disrupts harvests in major grain-producing countries. In other words, building information and a foundation for cooperation in overseas agricultural fields is directly connected to food security. Official development assistance (ODA) can serve as that channel. But whether agricultural ODA to date has played such a role remains questionable.

According to statistics by project sector from the Office for Government Policy Coordination’s ODA KOREA, bilateral grant aid that the government has provided to the agricultural sector from 2010, when statistics began to be compiled after Korea joined the DAC, through 2025 totals $1.35242 billion. Converted at the current exchange rate (the September 17 base rate for buying and selling of 1,368.3 won), this amounts to about 1.8505 trillion won, excluding forestry and fisheries. The 2026 Comprehensive Implementation Plan for International Development Cooperation also allocated 237.9 billion won to the agriculture, forestry, and fisheries sector.

The problem is that, although nearly 2 trillion won in taxpayers’ money has been poured into the agricultural sector alone since 2010, there is no data that can answer what kind of overall change this money has produced. It is not that there is no evaluation system. The Committee for International Development Cooperation conducts committee evaluations and implementing agencies conduct self-evaluations every year, while in the agricultural sector the Korea Rural Economic Institute separately handles performance management. However, evaluations are conducted only at the project level, so no data is produced that aggregates performance relative to cumulative input across the entire sector. Indicators are also centered on outputs such as the number of trainees or the completion of facilities, so tracking of how much recipient-country farm households’ incomes actually increased is cut off the moment a project ends. 

Kwon Taek-yoon, the expert member we met to ask about the performance of Korean agricultural ODA, is someone who designed and implemented such projects. From February 2018 to June 2024, Kwon served as director general of the Rural Development Administration’s Technology Cooperation Bureau and as director of its International Technology Cooperation Division, overseeing KOPIA projects in 23 countries (currently 22 countries), and served as secretary general of agricultural technology cooperation councils (AFACI, KAFACI, and KoLFACI) involving 49 countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America (at the time of his service). After retiring, he has worked as an agricultural expert member at KOICA, a board member of AfricaRice, and an agricultural consultant for the African Development Bank, gaining perspectives from outside donor countries as well. His raising of these issues is not to be taken lightly, given that the criticism comes from a figure who was in a position with strong incentives to say that results had been achieved. The Korea Agricultural Technology Newspaper recently met with Kwon to discuss problems and alternatives in the field of ODA. 
 

“Each project has results, but when combined, they cannot be explained”

KOICA expert member Kwon Taek-yoon said, “Each small project has its own achievements, but there is no framework for measuring the overall effect of agricultural ODA together, the way a department store adds up sales by floor to calculate total sales,” adding, “We need to reexamine ODA starting from the question of whether there have been results commensurate with the total amount spent.”

Kwon acknowledged that he himself was not free from this question. He said, “When I was director general, I was always concerned about how to explain the results relative to total investment to taxpayers, but I could not answer confidently either,” emphasizing, “If this question is raised, many places will feel uncomfortable, but it is an essential question if ODA is to be transformed from projects to boast about into projects that produce substantive results.”
 

If you make paddies with bulldozers and take photos, it is called a “result”

As an example of infrastructure support that does not take local conditions into account, Kwon cited Zanzibar, Tanzania. When paddies are leveled, the topsoil is scraped away and barren subsoil is exposed, which can cause yields the following year to fall by nearly half. Farmers who lose their income cannot endure for several years and move elsewhere, farming in the old way, he said. He pointed out, “They use bulldozers to create new paddies and take photos saying they have developed several thousand hectares, but if you go there three or four years later, only grass and trees are overgrown,” adding, “The real result lies in whether farmers’ incomes have increased and their problems have been solved.”

Regarding the farmland damage in Zanzibar, Tanzania, Choi Chan-won, head of the Korea Rural Community Corporation’s Center for International Agricultural and Food Development Cooperation, said, “We visit the site once a month to inspect it, but so far no complaints have been received,” adding, “I heard that the basic survey on Tanzania conducted by the Korea Rural Economic Institute also found that productivity had improved.” However, he responded, “A height difference has developed between farm roads and paddies, so we are currently carrying out a project to install bridges,” adding, “We will check again whether there were any complaints raised and what the site conditions are like.”

He saw the problem of donated agricultural machinery being left idle locally as stemming from the same root. Korea was able to succeed in mechanization because, amid economic growth, systems such as NongHyup loans, support for purchasing agricultural machinery, and debt relief worked together. In developing countries that lack such systems, simply transferring machines there means they cannot be used. Kwon said, “The problem begins with the illusion that if we take Korean things there, everything will work,” adding, “The fact that machines have rusted means they were not what they needed, but what we wanted to show.”

Intensive Korean agricultural technologies and expensive seeds can also easily become “pie in the sky” for local farmers. Kwon said, “We go there with expensive hybrid seeds and boast about them, but local people cannot buy them,” adding, “What we must be most wary of in ODA is a lack of consideration for sustainability.”
 

There are no experts, and the ministries are scattered

What Kwon identified as most urgent is people. Overseas agriculture requires broad expertise, from crop ecology to local systems and culture, but he says there are clear limits to a system in which people are temporarily dispatched while maintaining their regular jobs. He said, “You can get on a plane with an interpreter, but the question is whether you can turn that into strategic results,” adding, “When you try to find people to do agricultural ODA properly, there are none.” According to the Korean Educational Statistics Service (KESS), as of 2026, the number of students entering agricultural colleges (including junior colleges) is 6,294. He added the suggestion that at least several dozen of them should be trained as specialists in overseas agriculture.

Fragmentation in the implementation system is also an obstacle. Agricultural ODA is pursued separately by KOICA, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs and the Korea Rural Community Corporation, and the Rural Development Administration’s KOPIA. In the regular audit of the Korea International Cooperation Agency released by the Board of Audit and Inspection in January 2026, an examination of 29 designated linked projects among 126 for which the linkage details were specific found that 19 cases (65.5%) were not actually linked.

In a case cited by the Board of Audit and Inspection, the Ghana rice value chain project, in which the Rural Development Administration was to develop superior varieties and KOICA was to disseminate them, failed to be linked because the RDA’s variety development had not been completed by the time KOICA was to purchase and distribute the seeds. In addition, KOICA’s training on convergent technologies for agricultural machinery and smart farms was tied to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs’ project to improve the utilization of agricultural machinery in Laos, but because it was conducted as a multi-country training program, there was not a single participant from Laos. The Board of Audit and Inspection pointed out that projects that were difficult to link from the outset had been selected as linked projects and that guidance and supervision of implementation were also inadequate.
 

Successful cases achieved with little money were rooted in “problem solving”

Kwon said there are certainly success stories as well. Kang Kyung-ho, a researcher at the Rural Development Administration’s National Institute of Crop Science, was dispatched to Senegal through the Korea-Africa Food and Agriculture Cooperation Initiative (KAFACI), established a local breeding base, and developed varieties by crossing Tongil-type rice with African genetic resources. The resulting “ISRIZ” was evaluated locally as having twice the yield of the Sahel variety cultivated nationwide and also excellent eating quality, and five varieties were developed, including two in Senegal as well as varieties for Malawi and Mali. It was not a method in which Korea brought the answers, but one in which local scientists came to the RDA and conducted research themselves, and were helped to reflect the results in their own countries’ policies. Kwon explained, “It was selected by the OECD as an excellent case of innovative international cooperation, but it did not cost much money,” adding, “That is because we did not simply hand over money, but solved problems together.”

There are also overseas cases in which strategic ODA pursued over decades has returned benefits to the donor country as well. Kwon said, “In the past, Japan supported soybean development in Brazil over a long period, contributing to Brazil’s rise as the world’s largest soybean exporter,” adding, “When I heard directly from a person in charge at Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences, they said their analysis showed that Japanese taxpayers also receive benefits exceeding that amount every year,” and, “If such results exist, who would question the budget?”

Kwon’s diagnosis is that opportunities still remain open. Kwon said, “There is research showing that losses caused by flocks of birds at harvest time in African rice farming average 30%,” adding, “If a Korean company develops a device to solve such field problems, farmers will buy it even if the government does not purchase it for them, and in the end, if we solve their problems, opportunities will come to us as well—that is mutual prosperity.”
 

The government has also put forward “strategic” ODA, but

The government has also signaled a change in direction. In February 2026, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs presented a plan to transform the system into strategic agricultural ODA linked to exports. However, concerns are being raised that if only the slogan changes, without a system to measure results and specialized personnel to take charge of it, it could end up as yet another form of fragmented support.

As an alternative, Kwon proposed establishing an independent specialized foundation dedicated to overseas agricultural development. He said, “If the projects are done well, we can also attract funding from international organizations such as the World Bank or the Asian Development Bank,” adding, “This is not about blaming anyone, but about turning ODA from something to boast about into a business that creates opportunities.”