Future tasks following the enactment of「Act on Promotion and Support of Smart Agriculture」
Authors:   Journal of Law research, Kim Kyu-Ho 
Published: January 2024

The Act on Promotion and Support of Smart Agriculture, which was approved during the plenary session of the National Assembly in June 2023, is scheduled to take effect from July 2024. Comprising 6 chapters and 25 articles, this legislation addresses key aspects such as the framework for nurturing and supporting smart agriculture, the establishment of a foundation dedicated to smart agriculture, and the promotion and expansion of smart agricultural practices. Anticipated to serve as a foundational milestone, the Act is poised to facilitate diverse policy initiatives grounded in legal principles in the future. Additionally, it will play a crucial role in consolidating the objectives and orientations of various policy endeavors that have, until now, lacked a clear legal foundation.
However, as many of the provisions are focused on supporting policy projects currently being implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, there are still some issues that are insufficient in content or require further consideration. Primarily, it may be deemed inappropriate to explicitly designate ‘promoting unmanned agriculture’ as the primary objective of the law, for various reasons. Considering the various social issues related to smart agriculture, it seems somewhat inappropriate that the Act does not include a provision stipulating the priority of application of laws to prevent contradictions or conflicts in the interpretation and enforcement of laws in the future. In addition, the absence of provisions related to support for domestic and international sales of products or treatment of smart farm by-products is also considered to be an area that needs to be supplemented in the future.
In fact, Korea's ‘smart agriculture’ did not initially rely on clear definitions and concepts. Instead, it evolved by incorporating and refining similar or adjacent concepts, such as facility agriculture, precision agriculture, and digital agriculture, to a certain extent. This development was guided by addressing specific issues and aligning with policies. It is also a major characteristic of smart agriculture in Korea that the discourse on smart agriculture has been spread by the government, rather than naturally growing the pie of related industries centered on the private sector and the market like major countries abroad. Despite these limitations, smart agriculture has emerged as a major topic in agriculture, not only as a response to the agricultural sector's transition to a digital economy, but also as a way to increase agricultural productivity for food security, respond to the declining and aging farm population, and address climate change and environmental issues in the agricultural sector.
Therefore, complementary work such as revising the law prior to the full-scale implementation of the Act on Promotion and Support of Smart Agriculture, resolving doubts and building consensus in the agricultural field, emphasizing the agricultural mission of stably supplying food and maintaining rural society, upgrading the smart agriculture policy promotion system centered on ‘data’, and setting goals and strategies for ‘Korean-style smart agriculture’ in a way that broadly recognizes and utilizes the problems and resources of the agricultural field as well as domestic climate conditions will be the future challenges of domestic smart agriculture sector laws and policies.