Emergy Analysis of Korean Agriculture
Hanna Lee, Woo Kyun Lee, and Jeong-Gyu Kim

ABSTRACT : With the industrialization in Korea, the economy has invested more resources on industry and less on agricultural production. However, agriculture is still an important industry, since the whole nation depends on rice for their living. And the proportion of agricultural land is relatively large, which leads issuing environmental aspects of agriculture in this country. This study was conducted to evaluate the environmental and economical aspects of agriculture in Kore~ using system ecological concept, Emergy. The total Emergy inflow of Korean agriculture was 336.57xl0^20 sej·yi^-1 in 2003. Emergy yield ratio, the ratio of non-renewable and imported Emergy use to renewable Emergy use, was 5.21, which shows the agriculture in Korea has such a value as that of the world oil resources in 1986. Also, total agricultural product was 13.5Sx10^16 J·yi^-1 in 2003 and the Emergy inflow was 121.09x10^20 sej·yi^-1, From these data, solar transfonnity of Korean agriculture was estimated as 8.68x10^4 sej·J^-1

Key Words: Emergy, Korean agriculture, Sustainability, Environmental capacity