It is has become a stock in trade of imperialist and bourgeois propaganda to talk about " starvation " and " food shortages " in the DPRK and deride the DPRK 's Juche-based socialist agriculture saying things like "they cannot feed themselves " etc etc. What is the true state of affairs ?
Well during several visits to the DPRK in 1996, 2002, 2002, 2008 ,2009 ,2012 and 2013 members of UK KFA and the Juche Idea Study Group of England did not see anyone starving or begging for food. Now it is true that in the 1990s a number of factors such as a number of consecutive and very severe natural disasters (flood, drought , typhoon etc) , the collapse of the world socialist market and sanctions, blockade and sabotage by the imperialists, coalesced to create serious difficulties for the DPRK known as the "arduous march " . These problems were overcome step by step.
However the difficulties of the 1990s tended to obscure the great achievements of agriculture in the DPRK . Of course the DPRK started with a disadvantage in that 80% of land is mountainous and only 20% can be used for grain growing . However the DPRK obtained food self-sufficiency around 1960. Grain production increased at an incredible rate of 5.3 times between 1946 and 1984 ! The DPRK exported 500,000 tons of rice per year in 1970s and was still exporting some grain in 1993 before the natural disasters struck .
The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation in 1990 said that in 1989 the DPRK's rice yield per hectare was 7, 191 tons , an increase of 48% compared to 1987 and more than double the world average of 3,474 tons per hectare (also second to Australia which had the highest yield per hectare and higher than the US and Japan) . Who on earth can say that the DPRK's agriculture is inefficient ?? !
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