Agriculture in South Korea: Farmland, Crops & Trade Data

Reviewed August 2026 against USDA’s Economic Research Service, Statistics Korea’s Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Census, and South Korea’s Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (MAFRA).

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Agriculture in South Korea is squeezed onto 14.92% of the country’s land area — low, though Japan (11.09%) and China (11.55%) are lower, per the World Bank — and worked in plots averaging 1.56 hectares (3.86 acres), a fraction of a typical American farm. That scarcity is exactly why South Korea leans so heavily on imports: it imported $47 billion of agricultural and related products in 2023, and the United States supplied 23.6% of its food and agricultural imports, per Food Export USA. The rest of this page walks through what’s actually grown, who’s still farming it, what technology is changing, and how the numbers stack up against US agriculture.

Agriculture in South Korea at a Glance

South Korea’s arable land stood at 14.92% of its total land area in 2023, versus 16.57% for the United States, according to World Bank data. In hectares, that is about 1.46 million hectares of arable land nationwide — a figure that moves year to year with land surveys and conversion of farmland to urban use. Every hectare of what remains has to work harder, which is the single fact that explains most of what follows in this article: the small plots, the reliance on technology, the import dependence, and the government’s push toward smart farming.

The chart below sets the scale. An average South Korean farm covers 1.56 hectares (3.86 acres) as of the country’s most recent agricultural structural census in 2017 — the last year for which a full farm-size breakdown by hectare class is publicly available from that census series. An average US farm, by contrast, covers 463 acres (187.4 hectares), per the USDA’s 2022 Census of Agriculture. That is roughly 120 times larger, plotted here on a logarithmic scale because a linear chart would render the Korean bar as an invisible sliver.

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South Korea’s Crops and Agricultural Products

Rice is the anchor crop of South Korean agriculture, both economically and culturally, but it is far from the only one. Barley and soybeans fill out the grain side; napa (kimchi) cabbage, radish, garlic, and peppers dominate vegetable output because they feed the country’s kimchi and side-dish culture; apples, pears, and grapes are the leading tree and vine fruit; and ginseng remains South Korea’s best-known specialty export crop, grown mainly in the country’s central and eastern hill regions.

Rice is also the crop South Korea protects most, and it is the one figure worth checking for yourself rather than trusting a static number: MAFRA publishes a grain self-sufficiency rate every year in its Statistical Yearbook, broken out by crop, and it moves from year to year with weather, planted area, and consumption trends. Rice consumption per person has been declining for years as diets shift toward wheat-based food and meat, which is one of the structural pressures behind the wheat self-sufficiency initiatives South Korea’s grain agencies have been running. If you need this year’s exact self-sufficiency figure for rice, barley, or wheat, MAFRA’s yearbook is the primary source, not a blog restating last year’s number.

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How much of its own food South Korea grows

South Korea is close to self-sufficient in rice and almost entirely dependent on imports for feed grain. USDA’s September 2026 supply estimates show the gap, in million tonnes:

Source: USDA WASDE, September 2026. Most imported corn, about 9.3 million tonnes a year, goes to animal feed.

Land is the reason. Arable land covered 14.92% of South Korea in 2023, about 1.46 million hectares, per the World Bank. That compares with 11.09% in Japan, 11.55% in China, 19.06% in North Korea and 16.57% in the United States. Rice paddies take the best flat land, so feed grain, wheat and soybeans come mostly from abroad, while domestic farms focus on rice, vegetables, fruit, livestock and ginseng.

Farming in South Korea: Farm Size, Age, and the Labor Squeeze

Farming in South Korea is, structurally, an old person’s occupation working small parcels of land. Statistics Korea’s 2025 Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Census counted 2.507 million people in farm households nationwide, with 1.286 million of them — 51.3% — aged 65 or older, the first time that share has crossed the halfway mark. The median age of the entire farming population was 65.3, and the average age of a registered farm operator was 67.7. Farm operators aged 70 or older made up 44.1% of all operators, while those under 40 accounted for just 5.5%. For comparison, people 65 and older made up only 20.3% of South Korea’s total population in the same period — the farming population is aging at roughly two and a half times the national rate.

The chart below breaks down that operator population by age band, using the 2025 census figures: under 40, 40–59, 60–69, and 70-plus.

That demographic squeeze is the direct driver of automated machinery adoption, foreign agricultural labor programs, and MAFRA’s youth-recruitment incentives — all covered in the policy section below. It is also why land consolidation and cooperative farming keep coming up in South Korean agricultural policy: with the median farmer now over 65 and more than a quarter of farming households down to a single person (27.1%, up 7.1 percentage points from the 2020 census), someone eventually has to either take over these plots, merge them, or let them go fallow.

Since “small” and “large” only mean something next to a reference point, use the calculator below to see how your own acreage compares to both countries’ farm-size averages.

South Korea's Connected Agriculture Market

When people search for South Korea's "connected agriculture market," they are usually looking for the smart-farming and agricultural IoT sector MAFRA has been building out through targeted five-year plans. The current one, MAFRA's Smart Farming Industry Development Plan, was set in motion in 2024 and runs through 2029. Its most concrete, checkable benchmark is greenhouse coverage: smart greenhouses accounted for around 14% of South Korea's total glass and plastic greenhouse area in 2023, and the government's stated target is to push that past 30% by 2027, according to reporting on the plan by the Czech Republic's embassy in Seoul. The same plan sets a goal of growing specialized smart-farming enterprises from 23 in 2021 to 100 by 2027, and targets $800 million in exports of smart-farm products by 2027. South Korea's domestic smart agriculture market was valued at approximately $289 million in 2023, per the same reporting.

Outside greenhouses, the same plan pushes smart-farming technology onto 20% of the acreage in major open-field crop production zones, and covers precision sensors, automated irrigation and climate control, drone-based crop scouting, and AI-driven advisory tools. Vertical farming and hydroponics fit into this category too, concentrated in and around Seoul and other urban centers where land is scarcest and land value is highest — trading energy and capital cost for near-zero land footprint and year-round output.

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Government Policy: MAFRA's Push for Modern, Younger Farms

The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (MAFRA) is the agency behind nearly every structural shift described on this page — smart-farm targets, food self-sufficiency goals, and rural labor programs all originate there. Its policy toolkit breaks down into a few recurring categories:

• Financial support: subsidies and low-interest loans aimed at offsetting the up-front cost of sensors, greenhouses, and automated equipment for smallholders who could not otherwise afford them.
• Smart-farm infrastructure targets: the 2024–2029 development plan's greenhouse and enterprise goals described in the section above.
• Rural youth incentives: training and entry incentives aimed directly at the under-40 gap — just 5.5% of farm operators in the 2025 census — since that age group is where farm succession has to come from if consolidation and rural depopulation are to be managed rather than simply absorbed.
• Storage and post-harvest infrastructure: cold storage and grain-handling capacity remain a bottleneck on small, fragmented farms; the broader categories of storage infrastructure that matter for a farm of any size are covered in this breakdown of storage infrastructure types.

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South Korea vs. United States: Farming and Trade Compared

South Korea and the United States sit at opposite ends of almost every structural measure of agriculture, and the trade relationship between them is a direct consequence of that gap. The table below lines up the two countries on the metrics that matter most, each with its own year and source, since these census cycles and trade years do not line up perfectly.

The age-bracket cutoffs differ slightly (South Korea's census tracks "under 40," the US census tracks "under 35"), so treat that row as directional rather than a precise apples-to-apples match. Everything else lines up on the same basis. The gap in farm size and land share explains almost everything downstream: South Korea cannot expand its way to food security, so it has to buy the difference, and the United States is one of its largest suppliers of that difference.

US farm exports to South Korea broke down heavily toward products South Korea cannot grow at scale on 1.56-hectare plots: beef, pork, corn, wheat, and dairy are consistently among the largest categories, and the concentration shows up clearly in specific commodities — 58.7% of all of South Korea's beef imports came from the United States in 2023, and the US supplied 23.6% of South Korea's total food-and-agricultural imports that same year, according to Food Export USA. Food Export USA puts South Korea's total 2023 imports of agricultural and related products at $47 billion (Food Export USA), so roughly a quarter of the food and farm products Korea buys abroad comes from US farms and ranches.

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Precision Technology in Practice: Satellite and AI Tools

Digital tools built for large, fragmented, or resource-constrained farms translate directly to South Korea's small-plot reality, and to the broader task of watching agricultural land at scale for governments, agribusinesses, and lenders. This is where we at Farmonaut focus:

• Satellite-Based Monitoring: analyzing satellite imagery to support real-time monitoring of crop health, soil moisture, and vegetation performance, helping farmers and managers maximize yields and maintain soil health even on small or fragmented plots.
• AI-Based Advisory (JEEVN AI): our app and platform deliver field-specific recommendations powered by AI — irrigation timing, fertilizer needs, and pest risk based on real-time environmental observations.
• Product Traceability: the traceability module lets supply chain managers and exporters offer transparent, tamper-proof records from cultivation to shelf, supporting global food-safety expectations.
• Fleet Management: Fleet Management lets operational leaders coordinate machinery use, optimize logistics, and improve maintenance with satellite-based tracking.
• Carbon Footprint Monitoring: our carbon tracking platform lets agricultural operations monitor and reduce environmental impact in line with sustainability commitments.
• Crop Loan and Insurance Support: satellite-based verification tools let banks and insurers offer faster, risk-mitigated loans and insurance products to farming communities.
• API Integration for Developers: satellite and weather APIs and developer documentation for teams building their own platforms or national monitoring systems.

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Efficient Farmland Management in South Korea

With arable land capped near 14.92% of total area, how that land is managed matters as much as how much of it exists. Four approaches recur across South Korean agricultural policy and practice:

• Land consolidation: merging small, fragmented plots through cooperative farming arrangements to reach workable economies of scale — directly relevant given that 71% of Korean farms were under 1 hectare as of the last full structural breakdown in 2017, per FFTC-AP.
• Smart irrigation: sensor- and data-driven irrigation control to cut water waste on land where every hectare carries a higher opportunity cost than in land-abundant markets.
• Terracing: converting hillside terrain into productive, erosion-resistant growing area — one of the older methods within the broader family of agricultural revolutions and cultivation methods that South Korean farmers still rely on.
• Digital and satellite monitoring: continuous tracking of crop health, soil quality, and resource allocation to maximize the return on land that cannot simply be expanded, an approach covered in more depth among current sustainable agriculture methods.

FAQ: Agriculture in South Korea

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Conclusion: A Small Land Base Run at High Intensity

Agriculture in South Korea is defined by one hard constraint — 14.92% arable land, most of it split into plots averaging 1.56 hectares — and everything else on this page is a response to that constraint: smart greenhouses pushing toward a 30%-by-2027 coverage target, an aging operator base at 67.7 years average, and a trade relationship in which US farms and ranches supplied 23.6% of Korea's food and agricultural imports in 2023. None of those figures will stay fixed. MAFRA's yearbook, Statistics Korea's census releases, and USDA's trade data all update on regular cycles, and the method for checking each one is built into the sections above rather than left as a one-time snapshot.

For producers, agribusinesses, and government agencies working within that constraint — in South Korea or anywhere else land is scarce and aging out of use — satellite monitoring, AI advisory tools, and traceability platforms are what let a small footprint keep producing at a competitive level.