Only when children are healthy is there hope for agriculture: South Korea invests NT$100 billion a year to provide free friendly-grown food in school meals

"South Korea is now a critically ill patient of the 'collapse of the three rural issues': aging farmers, rural poverty, and low agricultural prices are dealing heavy blows to South Korean agriculture," said Lee Jae-wook, director of the Korea Rural and Fishing Village Social Research Institute, describing the current state of South Korean agriculture. Not only does the farming population account for only 5.5% of the total population, the average farmer age is 66.5, and agricultural production accounts for only 1.9% of the nation's total output. Agricultural policy has already become an important issue since South Korean President Moon Jae-in took office.

To save agriculture, the South Korean government three or four years ago worked hard to use elementary and middle school campus lunches as a pull factor to boost agriculture, investing 4 trillion Korean won (about NT$110 billion) a year to provide schoolchildren with environmentally friendly nutritious lunches, which has been quite effective. The Fubon Cultural and Educational Foundation's Campus Food Ingredient Management Project held a forum titled "Learning from South Korea - Discussing the Peasant Movement, School Lunches and the Cooperative Economy after the Presidential Election," inviting Lee Jae-wook, director of the Korea Rural and Fishing Village Social Research Institute, and Lee Bin-a, head of the School Lunch Support Center in Seongbuk-gu, Seoul, to share South Korea's experience.

Nutritious lunch reform cannot get moving, the Ministry of Education stays on the sidelines, group meal operators complain of chaotic administrative directives