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HISTORY
Korean Institute for the Study of Rural Societies (KISRS) is a civilian institute which was founded in 1985 in order to raise agriculture and fisheries and contrive balanced development of urban city and rural area and also to count towards the humane life of the farmers and fishermen through the special research of agriculture and aquaculture.
These days, although the condition inside and outside of the country is rapidly being changed, our Institute is pursuing the establishment of 'the local farming' which should be adequate to special characteristics of each different region and this plan is going to be functioned as a basis of protecting and developing our agriculture. We are also aiming for the firm cooperation between the producers and the 'frame of solidarity' which connects the producers of rural community and consumers of urban area.
Our Institute's recent activity is creating the module for the development of the local agriculture policy of the present days, which is, period of the citizens self-government era and acting as a consultant of the big cities. We are also carrying on our research in the field of the echo-environmental agriculture which is one of the several axes of early agricultural movement to pioneer the way to survive under the policy which opens our agricultural market to foreign country. We have led the organization of Echo-environment Agriculture Producer and Consumers' Party Conference(it is now Korea Federation of Sustainable Agriculture Organizations), and in 1997, as the result of our great effort, the Echo-environment Agriculture Raise Act was born.
The formal history of our Institute has been 22 years adding the present year, but we have to trace back to several decades to find out our real history. Because, many senior scholars, such as Ju Seok-gyun, Park Geun-chang, Kim Byeong-tae, Park Hyeon-chae, Lee Geon-woo, Lee Woo-jae, are the people who led the Korean Agriculture for the last half of the century and established the Society for the Research of Agriculture Problem in late 1950s, which is the origin of KISRS.
Society for the Research of Agriculture Problem changed its name into Society for the Research of the Modernization of the Korean Agriculture while they were going through the rapidly changing period of the modern history and put great effort in solving the agriculture-related problems by means of the cooperation and solidarity of the farmers. Those people who led the activities of this society are Kim Seo-jeong, Yang Jeong-gyu, Lee Woo-jae, Hwang Min-young, Lim Dong-gyu. But under the crisis of late 1970s, the society as well had to put down their signboard and also had to bring their activities and movements to a halt. Therefore, Korean Institute for the Study of Rural Societies was born in the womb of the Agriculture Problem Research Society and Research Society of the Modernization of the Korean Agriculture which tried to blossom the cooperation and coherence between the farmers and revive barren Korean agriculture movement. Lee Woo-jae, Jang Sang-hwan, Park Jin-do, Kwon Young-geun, Heo hun-joong are the scholars who established the KISRS and connected the forgotten tradition and the idea of the past
The important factors which made our Institute revive were the scientific research they promoted and the agricultural movement that was put into practice was resulted in as an active establishment of the self-living organization at the field. Having many researchers who do not only have the profound knowledge about the theories for the agriculture movement but also are very passionate in the practice of every activity, our Institute was heavily restricted in doing many activities as a pure civil Institute in the period of democratization movement of 1980s.
Since our Institute provided the scientific foundation of agriculture movement, past agriculture-related issues which have been remained as no more than a slogan now turned into really successful achievement that accomplishes qualitative growth of Korean agriculture. The most representative case for an example was the compute announcement of the government purchase price by researching the rate of rice production of 1988 and 1989, which has brought a sensational turning point of main grain purchasing policy. The computation for the government purchase price of rice led the scientificalization of production cost calculation of every products, and the scientific agriculture movement, that these scientific production rates are based upon, contributed so much to the formation of independent farmers' organization. In company with these achievement, the solution of the farmland problem through the discussion of the ground rental theory was led to the petition of establishment of the Farmland Act to the National Assembly.
The Public Hearing for the Democratization of the Agricultural Cooperative in 1987, which we took the lead, had become a chance to bring the sensational conversion of the democratization of Agricultural Cooperation. It was also from this moment that we held Cooperative reform and Agricultural Cooperative reform as our slogan which were taken place by the members of the cooperative themselves and based upon the Agricultural Cooperative of the each region. In 1989, the lawyers who were involved with agriculture brought an action for the relief issue of farmland purchasing cost failure of Hweng-sung district, Kang-won province have won the lawsuit and our Institute's activities to save the rights and profits of farmers also rose to the surface together. Some of the representative examples of our Institute's activities to save the rights and profits of farmers are the law-aid consultation at each cases such as the time of Cheju's common estate affair, dominion affair of the water-reclaimed land at Jindo, and Gochang's river site affair in 1990 and subrogation for the lawsuit of the fresh water rental of Sap-kyo lake of Tangjin, Chung-nam province in 1991.
KISRS have been drawing a blueprint for the new change which prepares for the changes in the environment of agriculture by the beginning of the WTO and the open policy of importation of agricultural goods. Under the rapid changes in the environment of the agriculture at inside and outside of the country, we insist on the settlement of the 'local farming' which meets the distinctive quality as an opportunity to guarantee the protection and development of the agriculture. We do not lock the idea of the 'local farming' in just as a theory of the agricultural policy. What we call 'local farming' is not only refers to the spatial place, but also it complexly means the progress of the rural economic activity through the standardized use of the several means and factors of the production of the local rural community, and additionally, the activities of the independent farmers' spiritual organization which our Institute focused on in the field of politics, economy, and science and the activities with the cooperation of the such organizations. Still, more field inspections are needed and we have even more assignments of the development yet, our Institute's movement to settle down the local farming is very rapidly proliferating the theory of the local farming like wildfire on the field of the Korean Agriculture.
The local farming which is based on the independently formed society of farmers necessarily calls for the development of the Life-cooperation movement in the urban area. Our Institute's slogan of the Life-cooperation movement is to establish the cooperation of the agriculture and aquacultural producers and to make the frame work of the solidarity which connects the urban consumers and rural producers. As a method to make this plan more actualize we had a opportunity to get a good respond from the urban people by holding the agriculture-related lecture several time. In the late 1997, we also managed the cooperation university, led a project to enlarge the understandings and interactions of the people concerned. We are aiming for the solidarity between the producers and consumers which is based on the independently formed society of farmers and the resolution of the agricultural problem through such solidarity, which are our major projects we are focusing on today, and by theorizing these projects, we can call it as a development of the local farming at the rural area and the creation of the Consumer's Cooperative.
This also goes along with the consistent effort of our Institute to create new 'farmer-like agriculture counterproposal' to survive in the era of the citizen autonomy and against the WTO by continuing authentical, professional, and practical research activity within the cooperation and solidarity.
Producers and Consumers' Community Conference of the Environment-Conserving Agriculture(it is now Korea Federation of Sustainable Agriculture Organization), which our Institute has prepared since 1995, is also maintaining its existence within the basic point of our Institute we have mentioned above. With this, we prepared a legislation about demanding the aid in the area of the production, procession, and distribution of the agricultural goods and laid before the National Assembly to legislate it and finally it was resulted in as a success of Echo-environment Agriculture Raise Act in 1997. And also we do not only place ourselves under the category of agriculture but also we are leading many activities in various classes and areas from National Assembly to rural field in order to develop the alternative policy. Besides, through holding the symposium, research presentation or public hearing for the main subject, our Institute is putting a great deal of efforts in establishing the 'upright agriculture policy.'
Through the projects and activities of cooperative activity team in our Institute, it is another aspect that we contributed to the agriculture movement that we have set up the theoretical foundation and practical opportunity of Farmers' Cooperation Project which has now become generalized. In order to strengthen this project in quantitative and qualitative way, we are consistently performing education at national level or sometimes, local level and also, by preparing lots of events intended for the students and citizens and disseminating the knowledges of the agricultural problems, we are endeavoring to widen the solidarity among farmers, students, and citizens.
Our Institute's activities which have been mentioned so far are well presented and described in the monthly published magazine called 'Farmers and Society' and manuscript named 'Heungnae(it means the smell of soil)'. The magazine 'Farmers and Society' has been sparing a great deal of its pages on the establishing the concept of the local farming excavating the example in the country.
Meanwhile, our Institute's profound and vast research results can be easily seen in ordinary agriculture research publications. It is very common to see the traces of our Institute researchers and books in many agrarian books and theses. The top place of the references in many books has been the books which our Institute has published.
Some of the representative publications which our Institute have brought out are 'Research on the Problem of Korean Agriculture 1,2', 'Comprehension of Korean Agriculture', '90 Q&As about Agricultural problem which everyone must know', 'Open Policy of Importation and Korean Agriculture', 'Farmers' Health and Healthy Medical Treatment', 'Structure of Local Community Government and Farmers', 'Dangerous Future', 'Economics of Cycle', 'Citizen Autonomy and Cooperative movement', 'What is the problem of the GMO', 'Simple Story of Agriculture', 'School meal is the Mothers' heart' and so on. We are not only staying on to the book publishing activity but also attempting to make audiovisual aids such as 'Women farmers rising together', 'Together with the Farmers' World' and through these kind of activities we are concentrating our efforts on widening the public bond of sympathy.
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