Roundup: DPRK launches national campaign to support farming

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has launched a national campaign to support farming to ease its food shortage as the planting season comes.

Because of soaring world food prices plus years of natural disasters and economic sanctions against it imposed by the United States, Japan and other countries, the DPRK was in food shortage for quite some time.

The UN World Food Program warned last month that the DPRK faces a food crisis, saying its annual food deficit is expected to nearly double from 2007 to 1.83 million tons.

Addressing the food problem to meet the basic needs of its people has become an important task for the ruling Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) and the DPRK government.

Premier Kim Yong Il said in a government report that the country would make great efforts to solve the food problem "at any cost" this year.

The DPRK will decisively solve the problems of food and consumer goods in order to substantially improve the people's living standard, said Kim in his annual government report to the national legislature in April.

Under the current situation of "worldwide food crisis and prices jumping," the only way to solve the food problem of the DPRK was to "rely on itself to decisively increase the yields of crops," said a commentary carried by the official Rodong Sinmun daily recently.

It called on all departments and units of the country to give their labor, material and technology assistance to the farming industry.

"All country supporting farming" had become the most sonorous slogan in the country.

To this end, the DPRK government strengthened its support to the rural areas, giving them priority in fields like electricity, fuels and machinery.

Government sectors and organs of the WPK set up sister relations with local farms. Officials were dispatched group by group to help farmers. They also brought tools to the farms.

Even ordinary people living in urban areas volunteered to help farmers. They collected manures and sent them to farmers as substitutes for chemical fertilizers.

The government also urged to widely disseminate and generalize the advanced agro-technique and farming methods.

It called for introducing high-yielding rice and maize seeds.

Potato and soybean were granted important roles in solving the food problem, for they were well adaptive to different soil and weather.

The DPRK insisted on self-reliance to feed its people, but it did not refuse food aid from abroad.

On May 17, the official news agency KCNA released a news report saying that the United States had decided to offer 500,000 tons of food to the DPRK.

"It will help settle the food shortage in the DPRK to a certain extent and contribute to promoting the understanding and confidence between the peoples of the two countries," the KCNA commented on the food aid.