Ministry announced more investment in addressing food security, digital agriculture, environmental preservation, and carbon neutrality as well as in food-tech and green-bio.
South Korea hosted the 6th edition of the largest international exposition in agriculture creating an exhibition and knowledge sharing platforms for novel innovations and products. Han Hoon, South Korea’s Vice Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, participated in the opening ceremony of the International Agriculture Exhibition 2023.
The International Agriculture Exhibition 2023 is held from October 12 to 22 at the Suncheon Bay Ecological and Cultural Education Center in Suncheon, Jeollanam-do, South Korea, with 500 participating institutions, organizations, and companies from 40 countries. Presented by the Jeollanam-do Government and sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, the event was themed “Agriculture Protecting Earth and Human Health”. South Korea’s Ministry promotes the low-carbon emission system for agricultural and livestock products. The Ministry announced more investment while addressing food security, environmental preservation, and carbon neutrality as well as in food-tech and green-bio.
The Exhibition emphasizes ‘healing’ through agriculture based on keywords such as climate change, carbon neutrality, digital agriculture, healthy agriculture, eco-friendly organic agriculture, and healing agriculture. The exhibition site consists of the Healing Agriculture Theme Zone, the Healing Agriculture Experience Zone, and the Promotion and Sales Zone.
The Healing Agriculture Theme Zone showcases the role of agriculture in promoting the coexistence of humans and nature, and proposes a vision for the future of agriculture. It features the Earth Healing Zone, which showcases digital convergence-based agricultural technologies and the Human Healing Zone to learn about the future of agriculture.
The Healing Agriculture Experience Zone features three zones: the Pet Zone, the Healing Garden,and the Aroma Therapy Zone, where visitors can connect with nature through plant-extracted aromas.The Promotion and Sales Zone showcases cutting-edge overseas smart agricultural technologies, eco-friendly agricultural trends, and advanced future agriculture concepts such as smart farms and digital agriculture.
Under the theme of the exposition, the ministry launched a campaign to help people understand and be aware of the low-carbon emission system for agricultural and livestock products, as well as to promote the value of agriculture and rural areas.
Vice Minister Han said: “South Korea is facing weather extremes and disruptions in global supply chains. But the agriculture and rural areas of South Korea have sufficient potential and capabilities to turn this crisis into opportunities. The Ministry will make the utmost effort to resolve challenges such as food security, environmental preservation, and carbon neutrality by taking advantage of agricultural value as well as agriculture’s functions of public interest. We will also make an intensive investment in rapidly growing new fields such as food-tech and green-bio. This way, we will continue strengthening the competitiveness of the agrifood industry.”
Food-tech, a merger of food and technology, refers to a new industry of applying cutting-edge technologies (e.g. artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), biotechnology, etc.) to the entire value chain covering all the business processes, including production, manufacturing, distribution, and delivery, with regard to agro-fishery products. Instances of food-tech include a cooking robot, a food-serving robot, a food delivery robot, fake meat, etc