South Korea needs to reduce rice subsidies, farming minister says

South Korea needs to reduce subsidies for rice farmers in the face of growing stocks of unsold rice, the country's agriculture minister said Monday. "We no longer see rice farmers as a baby to nurse," Chang Tae Pyong, minister for food, agriculture, forestry and fisheries, was quoted as saying by Maekyung business newspaper. "If we discover a better way of spending public money, we should consider a way to drastically reduce rice subsidies." The government has shielded rice farmers from international competition by spending 116 trillion won (102 billion dollars) in subsidized loans to rice farmers over the past 17 years, according to farming experts. Seoul fixes a floor price for rice, at which the government buys rice from farmers, which discourages farmers from diversifying. The minister's remarks came as analysts point out that despite the country sitting on an extra rice stock of about 1 million tons, at least 70 per cent of South Korean farmers spend their whole lifeproducing rice. Attempts by distributors to export surplus rice to South-East Asian countries are held back. "It is almost impossible to export because of the subsidy-caused overblown rice price," a distributor said. Despite the extra rice stock, South Korea must import a certain quota of rice under the Minimum Market Access obligations that Seoul adopted at the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade talks.