N. Korean corn crop to fall by 40 percent: agronomist

SEOUL, Sept. 22 (Yonhap) -- North Korea's corn yield this year is expected to
fall by 40 percent due to a fertilizer shortage and bad weather, the head of a
Seoul-based aid group said Tuesday after a survey in the North.
The North's corn crop for this year is estimated to be less than 1.5 million
tons, considerably down from the 2.5 million to 3 million tons it usually
garners, said Kim Soon-kwon, a leading corn biologist and head of the
International Corn Foundation. The forecast yield portends a severe food shortage
in the country where corn is believed to make up 40 percent of the total food
supply.
"Of all the corn harvests I've seen while visiting North Korea over the past 12
years, this year's crop was the worst," Kim said over the telephone from China
where he was staying after last week's trip to the North.
During the Sept. 12-16 trip, he surveyed corn farms on the outskirts of Pyongyang
and around Mount Myohyang and found a widespread shortage of fertilizer had
slowed corn growth. Also, a drought in July -- a critical period for the crop --
followed by heavy downpours further damaged corn fields, he said.
"Corn needs fertilizer more than any other grain," Kim explained. "The fact that
the fertilizer had not been provided appropriately because of the limbo in
inter-Korean relations is a major factor in the bad crop." said Kim, who spent 17
years in Africa helping develop higher-yield corn seeds and spreading farming
technologies.
Since 1999, the South Korean government has provided an average 300,000 tons of
fertilizer worth 96 billion won (US$77 million) to the North every year to help
ease the country's chronic food shortages. But the aid was suspended after
conservative President Lee Myung-bak took office last year, linking inter-Korean
aid to progress in North Korea's denuclearization.
North Korea's own fertilizer output is estimated at less than 500,000 tons a
year, about a third of the 1.5 million tons the country needs for its grain
farming, according to Seoul's Unification Ministry.
Aid activists from World Vision, who visited North Korea last month, said rice
paddies were more yellow than green this year due to a fertilizer shortage, which
will equate to low yields in the harvest season.
Seoul expects the North will fall more than one million tons short of the 5.48
million tons of food needed to feed its population of 24 million this year.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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