S. Korea's arable land declines in 2009

SEOUL, Jan. 20 (Yonhap) -- The amount of arable land in South Korea declined last year from a year earlier on construction of homes and public facilities, a government report showed Wednesday.

According to the report by Statistics Korea, the total size of the nation's
cultivated paddies and fields came to 17.37 million hectares last year, down 1.3
percent from a year earlier. The decline is sharper than the average contraction
rate of 0.9 percent for the past decade.
Total size for rice paddies shrank 3.4 percent on-year to 1.01 million hectares,
while that of fields increased 2 percent to 727,000 hectares over the same
period, the report showed. The difference was attributed to people's preference
for growing lucrative fruits, ginseng and other crops on fields over rice
cultivation on paddies, the report said.
kokobj@yna.co.kr
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