North Korea’s media continues to report that preparations are well underway for its annual spring farming season, emphasizing that the Juche farming method is exceeding production expectations.
According to a Rodong Sinmun article released on the 17th, “Already 94% of plowing in North Hwanghae
Province has been completed, in comparison to 66% this time last year. The provincial Farming Management Committee has ensured that all necessary components and
farming machinery have been produced at the appropriate time for plowing the fields.”
In contrast to the highly mechanized farming methods of the South, defectors claim that North Korea relies almost solely on the populace to carry out farming tasks by hand. Not only is fuel and expensive pieces of machinery like tractors and rice-planters hard to come by, basic tools like shovels, picks and hoes are in chronically short supply.
Some report the situation has grown so dire that farmers have reverted to using cattle to complete plowing tasks, a practice thought to have started after all state support ceased during the Arduous March of the
mid-1990s.
One defector originally from South Pyongan Province told
Daily NK, “The Wonhwa Cooperative Farm in Pyongwon County, South Pyongan
Province is presented to both domestic and international audiences as a model
rice-planting area. They get farming
equipment because of the “care” of the Central Party. Other farms in the area
have to source their own machinery parts, but even if they find them they can’t
use the equipment because there is no fuel.”
A second defector and former farmer explained, “Often state
agencies provide sickles and hoes to farms based on the principle that the “upper units help the lower units,” but mostly these can only be used
once before they break. It’s said the distribution of farming machinery is
the result of the ‘General’s concern,’ but most farms don’t receive anything at all.”
“It’s been this way for so long now that the people have stopped expecting anything from the authorities.
Many people now tend small plots up on the mountain slopes. You don’t
need large machinery for that type of farming, so they’re not that interested anymore
anyway,” the defector concluded.
