[THE INVESTOR] Rising wine imports have led to a sharp decline in size of grape fields in the country’s central region, a county official here said on Sept. 19.

A total of 725 farm houses submitted applications to the county government from the June-July period alone to stop grape farming, with their total size reaching 302 hectares, the official said.

Yeongdong, 214 kilometers south of Seoul, and its neighboring county, Okcheon, make up one of the three largest grape producing regions in the country, along with Yeongcheon and Gimcheon in North Gyeongsang Province, and account for 11 percent of the nation’s total grape production.

The reported size is tantamount to 19.4 percent of the total 1,553 hectares of vineyards in the region, the official said.

The mounting closure of vineyards is ascribed to the rush of imported fruits like cherries, mangoes, kiwis and melons, and the aging of farmers, said the official. He added that grape farms are also shorthanded.

“The profitability (of grape farming) has been aggravated in recent years, and aging farmers are also one of the main factors (for the closure of vineries),” Oh Yong-eun, head of a grape farmers‘ association here, said. Moreover, grape farming itself requires a lot of hands, and farmers are turning their eyes to other fruits like peaches, plums and berries.

Okcheon county is also in the same situation.

Up until this year, 140 farms applied for the closure of their vineyards amounting to 49.6 hectares, or 21.6 percent of the county’s total land of 230 hectares.

The vineries in the county took up 786 hectares in 2004. But the size dropped to 590 hectares in 2010 when South Korea and Chile struck an FTA deal.

(theinvestor@heraldcorp.com)