[Ha Yu-shin Column] Mechanization That Stops in the Field: Now Is the Time to Look at “Transition Profit and Loss”

[Expert Column] Ha Yu-shin, Director of the Upland Agricultural Machinery Development Research Center, Kyungpook National University

When a demonstration of agricultural machinery or on-site validation ends, farmers’ questions ultimately converge into one. “So, do we actually come out ahead?” Policy speaks in terms of mechanization rates, and researchers talk about work performance and reductions in labor hours, but farm households move according to their own calculations. Even if good seeders and harvesters exist, they will not switch if they judge the costs and risks to be greater than with existing methods.

 

What Has Stopped Is Not the Machinery but Farmers’ Choices

In my previous column, I proposed ‘Upland Farming Mechanization 2.0’. The idea was to go one step beyond standardizing cultivation systems to suit machinery, and to raise full-cycle productivity by connecting seeding, management, harvesting and post-harvest handling, all the way to agricultural product processing centers(APCs). Then the next question remains. Even though the technology has reached the fields, why do farmers not easily change their farming methods? I believe the answer, paradoxically, lies outside the machinery.

This is precisely what I am confirming in major production areas while leading a Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs research project to validate a standardized cultivation model for garlic mechanization. No matter how much garlic seeders improve, stable seed-metering is difficult if the size and shape of seed cloves vary widely. That is why, along with improving machine performance, we must also examine the sorting and standards for seed cloves. The same is true for mechanical transplanting of onions and cabbages. Mechanization is not completed by preparing machinery alone.

 

What Must Change Is Not the Machine but the Conditions Under Which It Works

Plastic mulching in garlic is an even clearer example. In conventional cultivation using perforated plastic film, the holes in the film and the planting positions of the seed cloves must be aligned, making it virtually impossible to apply a seeder. During harvest as well, remaining plastic film interferes with stem cutting, digging, and collection work.

This does not mean we should eliminate all plastic film. Plastic film plays an important role in keeping crops warm and retaining moisture during the wintering period. Weeds also emerge even under plastic film. Only the pattern of weed emergence and the timing of management differ depending on whether mulching is used and when it is removed. What matters is not the presence or absence of plastic film, but when, and how, it should be used to secure both mechanization and cultivation stability.

Therefore, for warm-region garlic, we are reviewing no-mulch cultivation together with the irrigation and weed-management systems it requires, while for cold-region garlic, we are validating a method that uses the function of plastic film during wintering but removes it in early spring to secure machine operability at harvest. Standardization should not mean imposing one cultivation method nationwide, but creating several models suited to regions and cropping types so that farmers can choose among them.

What Farmers Look at Is Not the Amount Saved but Transition Profit and Loss

At this point, I believe we need the perspective of ‘mechanization transition profit and loss’. The biggest variable I feel on the ground is labor cost. However, farmers do not look only at the labor costs reduced through mechanization. They calculate together the sorting of seed cloves, additional irrigation and weed management, machinery purchase or custom-operation costs, and even changes in production volume and marketability. On top of this come uncertainties such as whether the new cultivation method can be protected by crop disaster insurance, and whether machine-harvested produce will suffer disadvantages in existing purchasing and distribution processes.

This does not mean applying the same income statement to farm households nationwide. The numbers inevitably differ depending on region and cropping type, management scale, and the way machinery is used. What is needed is a framework for judgment that shows together what decreases and what newly increases when switching from the existing method to a mechanized method. What farmers look at is not the amount saved, but ultimately the difference after the transition.

Insurance is a case that clearly illustrates this transition profit and loss. Unlike warm-region no-mulch cultivation, which is being incorporated into the system, the early plastic-film removal method being validated for cold-region garlic still faces the task of securing consistency with existing insurance underwriting standards. Even if a method is technically possible, it is difficult to recommend that farmers make the transition if it falls outside the safety net of insurance.

Therefore, for standardized cultivation models whose stability has been confirmed through validation, it is necessary to pilot, starting in major production areas, the conditional underwriting of standardized cultivation models(tentative name) that recognizes coverage when management conditions are met, such as a certain removal timing and growth status, as well as irrigation and weed management. If field data are accumulated and then linked to insurance underwriting standards and special clauses, the time lag between technological change and institutions can also be reduced.

 

What Policy Should Ask About Is Not the Number Supplied but the Conditions for Transition

The 10th Basic Plan for Agricultural Mechanization must add one more question. “What agricultural machinery should be developed, and how much should be supplied?”Alongside this, we must ask “What must be changed so that farmers can transition to this method?”.

I would like to call this the next stage of Upland Farming Mechanization 2.0: the perspective of ‘mechanization transition profit and loss’. This means expanding policy beyond simply lowering machinery purchase costs to also reduce the negative factors in the transition process, including seed cloves, cultivation methods, irrigation, weed management, insurance, and even purchasing.

Of course, transition profit and loss cannot be created by declaration alone. First, we must accumulate mechanization unit data that can be measured in the field by crop·and process, such as work time and labor input, agricultural machinery work performance, fuel and operation costs, cultivation environment, and harvested-product quality. Standardizing this and connecting it to a judgment model that farmers can actually use, and further combining growth, weather, soil, and agricultural machinery data to expand it into AX(AI Transformation) -based full-cycle work optimization are the next tasks that upland agricultural machinery researchers, including myself, must solve.

Machinery can be developed. But if farmers do not choose it, mechanization will not be achieved. The moment farmers’ transition profit and loss lines up, the mechanization rate will follow not as a goal, but as a result.