Yanggang Province has decided to distribute extra farmland to organizations and businesses in an attempt to resolve food shortages among the province’s residents, Daily NK has learned.
“Since [the central government] has done little to deal with the food shortage resulting from the closure of the borders over the last few years because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Yanggang Province has decided to distribute extra fields to organizations and businesses with the view of producing more food on its own in any way it can,” a source in the province told Daily NK on Monday.
The source said the provincial party committee and the people’s committee reached that decision this year because people are given little of the food grown in the province each year and because the number of hungry families has been gradually increasing.
While making this land available for farming is unlikely to completely resolve the public food shortage, the provincial party committee believes it should at least be able to help employees at organizations and businesses have enough side dishes for their dinner tables. In fact, the land distribution program, which began at the end of February, is already almost over, the source said.
While deciding to distribute the land for farming, the provincial party committee mentioned how much the province has suffered because of the border closure over the past two years and how well people have complied with pandemic regulations imposed by the party, the source said. The committee also acknowledged that there had also been many instances of lawbreaking and attributed this behavior to the inadequate supply of food.
The committee reportedly said that the “anti-socialist and non-socialist incidents” that occurred around the border were due to the poor economic conditions and that people ought to dedicate themselves to self-sufficiency, while ridding themselves of the idea that smuggling or private enterprise are necessary for survival.
The source said the provincial party committee has also instructed organizations and businesses to vigorously farm the extra land they have been given, which they should treat as their own private gardens, rather than cultivating it haphazardly. Organizations and businesses have also been given the specific goal of handing over two to three extra tons of potatoes per jongboA unit of measure commonly used to measure the size of land ... More, a Korean unit of measurement equivalent to 9,917 square meters.
The provincial party committee also said that officials at organizations and businesses need to take the initiative in planting corn on the extra fields, along with other crops, and distributing the initial harvest to hungry families to ensure that nobody starves in the province this year, the source reported.
In addition, the provincial party committee reportedly stressed that officials must actively support farming areas if the province is to become self-sufficient without depending on handouts from the central government.
“While the main farming season is almost upon us, farms cannot depend upon a supply of good-quality manure. Therefore, the provincial party committee has said that all provincial residents need to work harder to produce manure before the spring planting,” the source said.
