In this blog post, we will introduce agricultural economics, an interdisciplinary field that connects agriculture and economics, and discuss who is suited to this major.
Hello, everyone. I am @@@, and I am majoring in agricultural economics in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology. I enrolled in 2020, so it has been quite a while already. However, I still find it difficult to understand what my major is. Not long ago, a post was uploaded on Snulife, a community for undergraduate students at Seoul National University, asking students to share their majors. There were many comments, and I remember laughing for a long time at one comment from someone who said that even their professor didn’t know what their major was. I’m probably not much different from that person, but I guess I’ll just have to do my best. Each department’s website has an introduction to its majors. My major is one of the smaller departments in South Korea, so I carefully read the introduction before applying and went to the interview. Based on the introduction on the department’s website, I would like to tell you what agricultural economics is like.
Traditionally, agricultural economics was a discipline that mainly analyzed issues related to agriculture, rural areas, and farmers using economic methodology. However, with changes in the role of agriculture and rural areas and economic phenomena, as well as academic developments in agricultural economics itself, today’s agricultural economics has developed into a representative applied economics that studies a wide variety of fields, including traditional agricultural production and consumption, economic development, international trade, resource development and management, environment-related economic policies, food and agriculture-related industry promotion, regional balanced development, technology innovation promotion, and human resource development. In addition to these diverse topics, this major expands its scope to include North Korea and Northeast Asian food issues and international agricultural issues, and combines field-oriented research and training to develop relevant theories, diagnose real economic problems, and find solutions.
The Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology is divided into two majors, Agricultural Economics and Regional Information, in the second year, and recently, the Agricultural Economics major has been renamed Agricultural Resource Economics. This applies to students enrolled in the 2011 academic year. As you can infer from the term “agricultural economics,” this major is related to agriculture and economics. It can be simply thought of as dealing with issues related to agriculture using economics as a methodology. Agricultural economics is used in various fields, such as the impact of free trade agreements on agriculture in Korea, how agricultural product prices are determined, and how subsidy policies help farmers. However, the study is not limited to agriculture and economics. If it were limited to those fields, it would not be possible to cover all of the topics mentioned above.
In order to major in agricultural economics, students must complete various general economics theory, mathematics, and statistics courses, and depending on their area of interest, basic knowledge of business administration, law, and sociology is also required. After taking these basic courses, students majoring in this field take applied economics courses such as international trade, resource economics, environmental economics, regional economics, agricultural product futures market analysis, agriculture-related industry theory, technology economics, and human resource economics, in addition to traditional agricultural economics courses such as agricultural production economics, agricultural management, agricultural product price analysis, agricultural product distribution, agricultural policy theory, and agricultural development theory.
This major encourages students to study social sciences, including economics. In other words, students will look at agricultural issues from a social science perspective. Social sciences may sound grand, but they are simply various perspectives (or academic disciplines) on society. Examples include economics, psychology, business administration, law, sociology, and political science. With the exception of the Department of Agricultural Economics and Social Sciences, all departments in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences are classified as natural sciences based on the College Scholastic Ability Test. The Department of Agricultural Economics and Social Sciences is the only humanities department in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. While other departments in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences focus on science and technology, the Department of Agricultural Economics and Social Sciences focuses on the humanities and social sciences.
Graduates of this major, who have learned academic diversity and problem-solving skills, are active as leaders in various fields of society. This major has provided the majority of human resources to related academic circles and research institutes, and graduates are widely employed in general companies and financial institutions, as well as related public corporations and cooperatives.
Not only students in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, but also students in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences are often asked, “Are you going to farm after you graduate?” Quite a few graduates do go into farming. I have seen quite a few who are engaged in corporate farming or pig farming. However, it is not the case that they return to their hometowns to become farmers, as one might think. Some continue their studies and teach students, while others work in academia at the Agricultural Economics Association or the Agricultural Policy Association, or at research institutes such as the Korea Rural Economic Institute. In addition to studying economics, graduates with a bachelor’s degree in economics are often employed by general companies, including large corporations, as well as financial institutions such as banks and securities companies. Due to the continuing popularity of the field, some students enter government service through the civil service examination, and many find employment at agricultural public corporations such as the Korea Agro-Fisheries & Food Corporation and financial public corporations such as the Financial Supervisory Service. Quite a few students join the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation and engage in economic and credit activities. As you can see, the career paths of graduates of the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology are extremely diverse.
The Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology is a very unique and diverse department in that it is considered non-mainstream in terms of studying agriculture, but mainstream in terms of studying economics. Only national universities have departments of agricultural economics, and similar departments include applied economics and industrial economics. However, these departments do not study agricultural economics as much as the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology.
Arnold Toynbee wrote about history from the perspective of challenges and responses. It is true that agriculture is facing many difficulties at present. However, if this is the challenge that Toynbee referred to, the future of agriculture will greatly depend on how we respond. This means that there is much room for development in agricultural economics. I hope that many people will take an interest in agricultural economics, and I want to take pride in my field of study and contribute not only to agriculture but also to society as a whole.
Agricultural economics is not just an academic discipline. Research and practice in the field are important for solving practical problems. The ultimate goal of our discipline is to analyze practical problems in the field of agriculture and develop policies and strategies to solve them. To this end, students participate in various fieldwork and research projects to develop practical problem-solving skills. Through this process, we are growing into professionals with practical problem-solving skills, not just theoretical knowledge.
We hope you will take a keen interest in the Department of Agricultural Economics!
