A curious little statistic worth pondering in a Joongang Daily report:
The wholesale price of hog carcasses also rose 4.8 percent from last Thursday’s 3,745.5 won per kilogram to 3,925.9 won the next day. Swine retail representatives hope prices will remain stable.
If you look at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange site, you will find hog futures for May delivery paying around 55.5 cents a pound. If you do the conversion you will find:
Korean price for hogs: 3,925.9 won/kg
US Price for hogs: 1,537 won/kg
Something to think about, in an era where everyone wants to fret about resource shortages and theoretical environmental armageddon, why should Korea’s hog farmers be allowed to indulge in such wasteful production?
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
The bigger issue here is how the media played on the general public’s anxieties at the expense of journalistic integrity.
Correct me if I’m wrong, Dram_man, but if you were to get rid of tarriffs on imported foodstuffs in Korea, Korean farmers would be out of business overnight.
A consumer’s bang-for-buck at the local e-mart checkout isn’t the only (or the most important) consideration when you’re talking about tariffs and/or subsidies.
What’s your take on rice tariffs, for example?
Just to let you know, Dram, the problem here is that you haven’t made your case for the Green headline.
Dead pig in Korea costs $4 a kg, in the US it’s $1.50. But we all know that the Korean system of supporting agriculture doesn’t rely so much on direct payments from the government to farmers as it does on government price controls of farm products – more like a direct payment from the consumer to the farmer.
So a good chunk of that $4 is simply price manipulation, which is indeed “inefficiency” in the economic sense, but not in the Green sense.
If you’re trying to say that Korean hog farms aren’t Green, then you need data showing that the higher price here is due to more spending on fossil fuels, water and other inputs per kilogram of dead pig, as compared to the US.
Who knows, maybe the higher price for water and utilities in Korea, coupled with lower standards for animal treatment, might actually mean that Koreans produce dead pig MORE EFFICIENTLY than Americans (efficient in the Green sense, not the economic sense). Either way, there’s not enough here to go on.
hoju- the rice tariff problem ought to solve itself in a few more years. I don’t think Korea has a rice farmer left under the age of 65.
I’m doing some research for a confidential company regarding import/export of rice.
I read an interesting article in the Korea Times a while back:
“Global warming is set to transform Korea from a temperate region to subtropical zone in a decade. ‘Researchers agree that climate change will enable farmers in the southern part of the country to yield rice… twice a year within five years.”
I wonder whether this would close the price gap and allow Koreans to ignore more media sensationalism regarding the FTA.
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