South Korea's farms are running out of workers — and the gap is only growing

"There are no people in the countryside."

Rural South Korea is aging faster than ever while the influx of young workers continues to shrink. The number of people available to work is falling far more quickly than the demand for farm labor, making seasonal labor shortages increasingly severe. If the trend continues, researchers warn that three out of every 10 workers needed to run the country's farms will be missing within a decade.

A report released Sunday by the Korea Rural Economic Institute projected that, under a baseline scenario, the domestic agricultural workforce sufficiency rate will fall from 79.9 percent in 2023 to 70.1 percent in 2034. The labor shortfall is expected to widen over the same period, from 244,300 workers to 281,500. The demand for farm labor remains largely unchanged — it is the supply of willing workers that is disappearing faster.

Mechanization has gradually reduced the total amount of labor farming requires. But the number of people actually available to work in rural areas is declining at a far faster pace.

From 2000 to 2023, demand for agricultural labor fell 46.8 percent — from about 1.28 million workers to 680,900. Over the same period, the domestic supply of available farm workers dropped by 55 percent, meaning the workforce is shrinking faster than the work itself.

The primary driver is aging. The share of farmers aged 60 and older has consistently grown in rural areas, rising 15.1 percentage points since 2000, according to the researchers. Meanwhile, the younger and middle-aged workers who would normally take over family farms continue to dwindle.

The traditional model of family members pitching in during busy seasons is also rapidly disappearing. Where families once filled labor gaps themselves, farms now rely on permanent employees, day laborers and foreign workers to get the job done.

The problem goes beyond headcount. The hours workers can put in are also declining, particularly among older farmers who cut back their daily hours due to physical strain. Even when the same number of people show up, the actual labor input on the farm is significantly lower than it once was.

The researchers also projected that more frequent heat waves and heavy rainfall driven by climate change will intensify seasonal labor bottlenecks, concentrating demand into ever-narrower windows. Failing to secure workers at the right moment raises the risk of reduced harvests and lower crop quality.

Foreign workers already play a critical role in South Korean agriculture. In labor-intensive sectors such as fruit orchards and greenhouse vegetables — where large numbers of workers are needed for harvesting and sorting — normal farming operations would be difficult without them.

But the researchers said simply expanding the number of foreign workers will not be enough to resolve the labor shortage.

Labor needs vary widely by crop and region. Apple and pear farms require concentrated manpower during harvest season, while greenhouse vegetable operations need steady staffing year-round. Rice farming has been heavily mechanized, but fruit and vegetable cultivation still demands significant manual labor.

For that reason, the researchers said a smarter approach — analyzing in advance which regions, which crops and which seasons need workers, then deploying them efficiently — matters more than simply raising the overall number of foreign workers admitted.

They also recommended improving housing, transportation and working conditions for foreign workers, noting that shortages of accommodation and mobility barriers frequently prevent available workers from actually reaching the farms that need them.

Ultimately, the researchers said, foreign labor should serve as a supplementary resource that fills gaps in the domestic workforce — not as the primary replacement for it.

The researchers recommended that the government first establish a clear policy target: a defined domestic agricultural workforce sufficiency rate to work toward.

Rather than focusing primarily on how many foreign or seasonal workers to bring in, the government should first determine how much of the domestic workforce needs to be maintained — and manage toward that goal.

To that end, the researchers called for building a forecasting system that anticipates labor demand by crop type, region and season well in advance.

For example, if large numbers of workers will be needed in northern North Gyeongsang Province during the apple harvest, the system would connect workers from other regions ahead of time and arrange transportation and accommodation as part of the package.

The researchers also proposed building a nationwide digital agricultural labor platform — a system where farms register their labor needs and work schedules while workers enter their experience and the areas they can travel to, enabling real-time matching.

Scrambling to find workers after the busy season has already begun, as is common now, is not a sustainable solution to recurring labor shortages, the researchers said.

They added that the platform should eventually grow into a comprehensive system linking job placement with skills training, proficiency tracking and inter-regional mobility support.

The researchers argued that the long-term answer lies not in securing more workers but in transitioning to a model of farming that maintains the same output with fewer people.

Government mechanization policy has historically centered on rice farming, but developing technology applicable to labor-intensive crops such as fruit and greenhouse vegetables will become increasingly important, the researchers said.

Wider deployment of compact autonomous farm machinery, smart-farm equipment and agricultural robots could significantly reduce the labor gap, the researchers said.

Since purchasing farm machinery outright is beyond the reach of many individual farms, the researchers also recommended expanding contract farming services — in which specialized companies provide both the equipment and the operators.

Under such a model, a contractor handles sowing, pest control and harvesting on behalf of the farm, allowing the farmer to cut equipment costs while securing skilled workers on a reliable basis.

The researchers concluded that easing the labor shortage will ultimately require agriculture to follow the path of manufacturing — shifting to a structure where people and machines work side by side.