Surrogate Farming

[Anchor Lead]

Aging is becoming a bigger problem for rural communities than for cities. In order to address the shortage of farmers and farm hands, local authorities have established a popular surrogate farming service.

[Pkg]

A tractor is busily tilling the land. It took about two hours to work the field measuring about 3,000 square meters. The machine easily finished the work, which would have taken the 60-something year-old owner of the field several days. The farmer commissioned the spring farm work to the local agricultural technology and extension center for roughly 125 U.S. dollars

[Soundbite] Woo Hyeon-ja(Applied for Surrogate Farming Service) : "It's hard for me, because I don't have any machinery. I can't work with only a shovel and machines are too expensive to buy. So I applied for the service."

The 65-and-older population in rural communities nationwide nears 22%. It's become difficult for elderly farmers to work the land themselves and find help, which is why an increasing number of older farmers are seeking out such surrogate farming services. In the Chungcheongbuk-do region the number of farmers using this service spiked from some 300 farms in 2014 to roughly 2,700 last year. Since the cost is reasonable and surrogate farmers do good work, the service has grown quite popular and farmers have to wait about a month to receive help.

[Soundbite] Kwon Oh-seung(Chungbuk Jeungpyeong Agricultural Technology & Extension Center) : "Farmers apply mostly for the tilling job to plant crops. The service is fully booked until the end of April."

The rapid aging of farming communities has motivated local authorities to come up with a new solution.