South Korea’s Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs announced that South Korea will invest US$1.86 billion to develop new products and technologies that will double its exports of farm and fishery products by 2017. Most of the funds will be spent on research and projects to develop country-specific products for export with particular interest in neighboring countries such as China and Viet Nam. One such project is the construction of ten large-scale fish farms to produce country-specific, high-value products such as sea cucumber and abalone. South Korea’s farm exports have been growing at approximately 16% per year over the past five years. In the first half of 2013 China imported $467 million worth of products from South Korea – up 9.5% from the previous year and making China close to Japan as the top importer of South Korean food products. To read more about South Korea’s five-year plan:
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