Journal Resume

Communitarian cooperative organic rice farming in Hongdong District,

South Korea

Conventional agriculture characterized by monoculture system, use of mechanication,

and heavy reliance agrochemical has been globally contributing to cause soil erosion, water
contamination and biodiversity loss. This environmental crisis caused by conventional
agricultures make few want to develop and promote environmentally and ecologically
sustainable agricultural system. Some of aprproaches to sustainable agriculture such as
biodynamic farming, organic agriculture, natural farming, permaculture and agroecology,
have been suggested. In the decade of 2000-2010, the worlds total organic agricultural land
more than double from 14.9 M ha to 37 M ha, which the worlds total of agriculture land area
in 2010 is 0,9%.
Collective approaches to organic agriculture
There are various forms of collective organic agriculture, that is; community
supported agriculture, communal organic farming, community based organic agriculture,
community gardening, and communitarian organic farming.

Community-supported agriculture (CSA) is an agriculture institution whom

committed consumen buy share to provide financial support for organic farm before a
cropping season begins and receive fresh produce from the farm periodically as the season

progress. As a return, the farmers must concentrate on producing what the contracted
consumers want without any costs being required for marketing during the growing season.
This CSA institution was conceived and developed in Germany and Switzerland and
introduced to USA in the mid-1980s and then to some Asian countries (China, Japan, and
Korea).
Communal organic farming is identified by Elinor Ostorm. Ostorm brought attention
to communal property which is exclusively accessible to an identifiable community. He made
a research on the non excludability or prisoners dilemnas at Gao village, Chinese in 1960s
and 1970s, where agricultural land was communally owned and cultivated collectively.
In community-based organic agriculture program, public agricultural land is
converted into closed-access property and managed sustainably by a contracted community
endorsed with bundle of property rights to the land. This program is practiced in Cuba in
1990s. before 1990s there are three times as much land in Cuba was allocated to sugar cane
farms as was devoted to food crops. Cuba introduced organic farming as a national survival
program that tens of thousands of acres of state land were leased to local farmers who were
granted a right of use or usulfruct right. This meand that should the leased land be needed for
other purposes, the farmers must give it back to the government.
Community garden is worked by local community members for variety of purpose
including education, community-building, and food security as well as food savety. This
community gardens has been allocated to Western Europe, North America, and Australia.
The capitalist cooperative approach to organic farming can be distinguish from other
collective approaches abovementioned in that agricultural land involved in the cooperative
approach is individually and private owned. Through the organic-farming cooperatives,
farmers can obtain a range of benefits in quality control and particularly in markets with
economies of scale unattainable by individual farmers.
Communitarian cooperative organic agriculture
There are various meaning of communitarian according to the espert. Sandel (2005)
said communitarianism as a majoritarianism or liberalism or individualism. Braithwaite
(1989) defined communitarianism as strong sense of mutual trust and help shared by the
community. In the other meaning, Olsen (2010) opine that communitarian society should not
be equated with monological communities where all individual elements are subordinated to
the whole totality. Bouman and Brown (2010) referred to communitarianism as a model of
social organization based on individual liberties and rights that is balance with community
needs and sustainability.
Communitarianism and a capitalist cooperative can not be blended because the farmer
concerned for the well-being of community whereas the latter is organized to primarily meet
financial goals for the individual members. Robinson and Hales (2007) set out six outcome
indicators of community sustainability.

Owen who called as the father of socialism and the father of cooperative movement,
envisioned a socialistic cooperative where a place-based community is cooperativised, profits
are distributed equally, and people cook and eat together. ICA say that a cooperative is an
autonomous association of person united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social,
and cultural needs and aspirations, through a jointly owned and democratically controlled
enterprise. Then ICA promulgated seven cooperative principle as a guide of how to put
cooperative values into practice.

Not only communitarianism have in common with cooperative principles, but it can
also be embedded in other types of property rights regimes. Communitarian organic farming
embraces bottom-up collective actions for organic farming, taking into account non-market
environmental values of organic farming farming including watershed protection and soil
conservation.
Study area and research methods
Korea has a surface area of about 100.000 km 2 or 10 M ha with a population of 49.9
M in 2010. The agricultural land of Korea amounted to about 1.7 M ha (0.98 M ha of
paddies rice and 0.73 M h of dry paddies) in 2010. Korean agriculture has been characterized
by small-scale farming and the cultivation of rice crop.
Since the early 1970s, Korea has been rapidly transformed from a low-income
agrarian society into highly industrialised economy. This brought environmental pollution
and a sharp decline of the countrys agricultural sector. The share of the Korean agricultural
sector from 24.5% of GDP and 49.5% of the labour force in 1970, to 2.2% and 6.6% in 2010.

This paper focuses on Hongdong within the context of the Korean sustainableagriculture movement. Hongdong is an inland rural district, one of the 11 districts in
Hongsung Country in South Choongcheong Province. Hongdong has 3800 ha with 878 ha of
rice paddies and 709 ha of dry paddies. This paper use concept of communitarian cooperative
organic farming.
Communitarian cooperative organic rice farming in Hongdong
5.1 organic rice farming in Hongdong
Various organic rice, such as integrated rice-duck farming (IRDF) and integrated rice
and mud-snail farming have been employed in Hongdong. In IRDF (as dominant), rice
(Oriza sativa) is grown with Aigamo ducks which do not eat rice leaves. It was an exemplar
of permaculture that are consciously integrated in order to maintain soil fertility with no or
little use of artificial fertilizers. IRDF has spread over many Asian countries (Japan, China,
Korea, Vietnam, Philippines, Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Laos) sence early 1990s. the
organic rice farmers in Hongdong have made the most of organic food certified system
because rice grown through IRDF or other organic farming methods can be certified as
organic rice.
5.2 Business cooperatives and community organizations in Hongdong
There are two business cooperatives who operated the organic rice farming, they are
Poolmoo Agricultural Cooperative and Poolmoo Credit Union. Poolmoo Agricultural
Cooperative operated an organic health food wholesale outlet at Hongdong and developed a
network with the other environment-friendly agricultural cooperatives in Korea. Poolmoo
Credit Union is an financial cooperative who has significantly contributed to the economic
development of the local community by keeping the local wealth to be circulated within the
community to some extent. In 2011, a group of Hongdong residents formed the Garden Club,
a club where they can eat, drink, relax, and socialize.

The Hongsung Eco-Farming Education Centre is a two-story building constructed in

2000 by the Hongdong organic farmers. It has been a home to various conference and
workshop for disseminating the down-to-earth knowledge of sustainable agriculture. It also
accommodates a museum to provide visitors with a live picture of what the traditional
agriculture and rural culture of the Hongdong area looked like.
5.3 Communitarian elements in the Hongdong cooperative organic rice farming.

First, the cooperatives that are operating in Hongdong are place-based the
organization (producer cooperatives). For example, the Poolmoo Agricultural Producers
Green Cooperative who build a strong place attachment for the cooperative members so that
they can be stimulated to share a strong value towards community sustainability. It also have
a purpose to afford the community to build high-cost facilities including a biogas plant and a
fertilizer plant.
Second, profit-oriented farmers cooperative are linked with various non-profit
community organization, as founder is Poolmoo Agricultural High School in 1958. This
school took inisiative in establishing idea of cooperative organic farming at Hongdong. Many
alumni of Poolmoo School took the lead in launching various producer or consumer
cooperative as well as non-profit community organizations.
Third, organic farming in Hongdong has been developed under the strong community
leadership of pioneers in bottom-up, grassroots and local sustainable-agriculture movement.
The government helped to pushing the movement forward with the introduction of organic
food certification and other policy such as subsidies for organic farming facility.
Fourth, bottom-up and voluntary efforts of local farmers have been driving force of
redefining and rebuilding the place identify of Hongdong. The organic farmers migrated from
urban areas so that increased uptake of organic rice farming in Hongdong frequently reported
through the media.
Fifth, Hongdong has reintroduced Korean traditional agricultural practices. For
example, organic farmers in Hongdong regenerated soil fertility in a closed-cycle flow of
nutrients as much as possible. The farmers use the manure and recycle it as a natural fertilizer
and minimize the necessity of importing off-farm energy resource.