Stephan Haggard Quoted on North Korea's Recent Agricultural Reforms
North Korea farmers to test regime appetite for reform
09/26/2012
Carol J. Williams,
The Los Angeles Times
Bountiful cucumbers, tomatoes and oranges grown in tiny backyard gardens kept private farmers' markets in business in the Soviet Union and served as a constant reminder that, by contrast, massive state-run farming collectives were pitifully inefficient.
In China, agricultural reforms were the crucial kick-start to the communist giant's three-decade transition from a centrally planned economy to one driven by market forces. And unlike their cohorts in Moscow, the Chinese leadership managed the rural revolution without losing its grip on political power.
North Korea's communist leadership is now reported by recent visitors to be experimenting with smaller-sized farming cooperatives and incentives for expanding food production by letting farmers keep and sell more of what they grow.
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Stephan Haggard is the director of the Korea-Pacific Program at IR/PS, where he specializes in the Korean economy. In 2011 Haggard published Witness to Transformation: Refugee Insights into North Korea with co-author Marcus Noland, with whom he had previously authored Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform. Dr. Haggard writes the "North Korea: Witness to Transformation" blog at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
