Mandarin oranges, apples, grapes moving north due to rising temperatures


Korea’s agricultural map is seeing drastic changes, with mandarin oranges growing north of Jeju Island, as the country increasingly experiences subtropical weather.

The concept of regional specialties such as Jeju tangerines, Cheongdo peaches, Gyeongsan grapes and Daegu apples has lost meaning as the boundaries for crop cultivation have migrated northward due to rising temperatures.

It has already been several years since tangerines, Korea’s signature subtropical fruit that used to grow only on Jeju Island, started to be harvested inland in South Jeolla and South Gyeongsang Provinces.

Jeju accounted for 99.7 percent of the nation’s cultivation area for tangerines (214.24 square kilometers) last year, according to Statistics Korea and the Rural Development Administration.

South Gyeongsang Province has maintained a tangerine plantation area of over 10 hectares (100,000 square meters) since 2007 through last year. South Jeolla Province began growing tangerines in the early 2000s, reaching a plantation area of 75 hectares in 2005.

The cultivation area for peaches has increased as temperature rises attributed to global warming have reduced the risk of freezing damage.

In the past, only the North Gyeongsang region including Cheongdo County used to meet the optimal annual average temperature of between 11 and 15 degrees Celsius for growing peaches. But now, peaches grow nicely in North Chungcheong and Gangwon Provinces as well.

The cultivation area in North Chungcheong more than tripled from 1990 to 3,743 hectares this year.

In Gangwon Province, the area devoted to peaches jumped from 449 hectares in 1990 to 820 hectares in 2004, and dropped to 554 hectares this year.

The peach plantation area in Gyeonggi Province expanded from 814 hectares in 1990 to 1,366 hectares in 2005, with Paju seeing the most notable growth from 1.2 hectares in 1992 to 15 hectares in 2007.

The cultivation zone for grapes has also moved north.

The grape planting area increased rapidly in the 1990s, but started to decline with the surge in imports of Chilean grapes under a free trade agreement with the South American country that took effect in 2004.

The cultivation area of over 30,000 hectares in 1999 dropped to 17,445 hectares last year.

North Gyeongsang Province, the main grape-producing region, saw a 39.4 percent fall in cultivation area last year from its peak in 1998, while that in Gangwon Province expanded from around 100 hectares in the 1990s to 371 hectares in 2008.

Yeongwol County has become the No. 1 grape-producing area in Gangwon, with the cultivation area increasing by nearly 10-fold in 15 years to 67.9 hectares in 2007.

The land used for growing apples, a fruit of the temperate zone, is shrinking as temperatures rise.

It dropped from around 50,000 hectares in the mid-1990s to the 30,000-hectare range recently. The cultivation area in North Gyeongsang, the chief producing region, has nearly halved since 1992 to 19,024 hectares last year.

But the apple cultivation area in the mountainous Gangwon quadrupled over the past five years to 434 hectares this year, with Pyeongchang County emerging as a major producer.

Naked barley, which had been grown mainly in the southern regions as it is vulnerable to cold weather, expanded to North Chungcheong and Gangwon Provinces.

The overall production of naked barley is dropping due to its low cost competitiveness, but the main producing area has moved up from South Jeolla to North Jeolla.

An official at Statistics Korea said there was an urgent need for farmers in different regions to shift to new crops in response to global warming.

“We must develop technologies to keep cultivating what we’ve been growing and find ways to introduce and grow new subtropical species,” he said.

By Kim So-hyun (sophie@heraldcorp.com)