I'd like to introduce a little bit about Vietnamese agriculture to help you find

I'd like to introduce a little bit about Vietnamese agriculture to help you find a report that I'm interested in. I mainly introduced agriculture in developed countries, but now I think we should pay attention to Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam. Stop staring at developed countries. It's almost impossible for us to imitate them similarly anyway.

Vietnamese agriculture accounts for about 12% of GDP. Compared to Korea, which has less than 2%, it is a country with a large proportion of agriculture. It can be said that we are just getting out of the industrial structure of developing countries. Agriculture in Korea is very small compared to the size of the industry. That's the case with most developed countries. That's one of the reasons that puts our country in the same ranks as developed countries. It's ridiculous. Everyone is less interested, but agriculture is by no means an industry that can do that. Let's take a look at Vietnamese agriculture.

In 2023, Vietnam's agri-food exports will reach $53 billion. That's pretty big. In Korea and Japan, it's around 10 billion dollars. The main exports of Vietnamese agriculture are rice, coffee, seafood, fruits and vegetables, cashew nuts, rubber, and pepper. Wood and furniture also account for about 20 percent of all exports. Tobacco and beer produced domestically by foreign companies are the main exports in our country.

What's interesting is that Vietnam's agriculture has maintained a 3% growth rate, even though the number of farmers is decreasing significantly. I wonder what the secret is, because the state has invested in agricultural infrastructure and developed science and technology. Over the past decade, the agricultural labor force has contributed -38% to growth, thanks to capital investment (63%) and science and technology (75%).

The income gap between urban and rural areas is more than double. Farmers are very difficult to live in. It doesn't seem to be much different from developed or developing countries. Vietnam will never have an easier time because its income is smaller. This will be resolved to some extent only when the economy grows further and the number of farmers decreases further.

The Vietnamese government expects the private sector to lead the R&D investment in the future. This means that they think it is worth that much money. Nevertheless, as always, many reports call for improving the quality of agricultural human resources, attracting investment in science and technology, and strengthening international cooperation in science and research and technology applications. In addition, for the development of agriculture in Vietnam, we are asking the government to allocate more of its R&D investment to the agricultural sector.

In Korea, we also analyzed the contribution of science and technology to agricultural GDP growth. The bottom line was that it was less than 30%. Most of the growth was due to scaling, even though our country is still a small-farm structure. R&D investment is probably impossible to compare with Vietnam. Still, I see a lot of calls for more growth. I wonder what the agricultural structure doesn't support.

Korea exported $1 billion worth of agricultural materials, such as agricultural pesticides and fertilizers, to Vietnam last year. I think it will increase further in the future, so what about the microorganisms, seeds, biotechnology, and smart farm technologies that we expect? Will it grow with the agricultural growth of Vietnam or other Southeast Asian countries?

To be honest, I'm a little worried. It's not easy to expand overseas even though we can't demonstrate or scale well in Korea. I wonder if we only look at agriculture from the perspective of farmers. I think we should think twice about the fact that agriculture can survive only when the agricultural industry is strong.

Lastly, we should look for more research in Korea to see if there has been such research. I've seen it before, but there are no follow-up studies because the R&D effect is not good. Also, looking at this, if you want to invest in agriculture, it would be better to do it in Vietnam or Southeast Asia. Actually, Singapore's Olam, Cargill, and LDC have invested a lot.