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The new normal of North Korean food security seems to be increasing choice for the privileged elite, chronic insecurity for a non-trivial share of the non-elite, and arguments among foreign observers about the impact at the margin of fluctuating local production, imports, and prices, with some commentators taking both sides of the debate in quick succession. The 28 June reforms, which in part devolved a certain degree of production responsibility to relatively small work teams and introduced fixed-rate tenancy or sharecropping arrangements, have alternately been described as a great success spurring increased output in 2014, or a fading failure responsible for the decline in local harvests last year. In the extreme some commentaries betray an amusing view of farming in which weather and inputs of fertilizer play no role.
Part of the problem is that North Korea is opaque and actual practices appear to have varied from cooperative farm to cooperative farm frustrating even the most dedicated analyst from drawing firm conclusions. But there are some subtle constants that run throughout North Korean history and have been particularly evident in the farm sector since pilot projects similar to the 28 June reforms were undertaken in 1998.
Time inconsistency of policy commitments and problems of credibility are a recurring leitmotiv. North Korean officials have never seemed to grasp the notions of reputation and credibility and have a terrible track record of reneging on commitments in both the industrial and agricultural spheres. In agriculture this has manifested as repeated extra-legal seizures of grain from cultivators undertaken in response to urban shortages going all the way back to the 1940s, which has elicited the understandable hedging response of said farmers. In the case of the 28 June reforms, according to reporting in the Daily NK and RFA, during the most recent harvests, informants in three provinces described officials reneging on sharing arrangements and seizing grain that rightfully belonged to the farmers. This is not a total surprise. And apart from grumbling, as in the past, the farmers have neglected the official fields to concentrate on home plots (and in all probability diverted inputs from the official fields to their household plots).
To compound the incentive problems, according to the Daily NK reporting, the state continues to micro-manage planting decisions from the top down to an astonishing degree. The anecdotal descriptions of higher yields on private plots reflect not just more care and intensity in farming, but in comparison to the official fields, greater freedom in basic decision making regarding crop composition, density of planting, etc.
A second issue is the political economy of subnational decision making. One of the striking things about the famine was the degree that the failure of the public distribution system (PDS) was furthered by the “every man for himself” behavior exhibited by local officials who understandably blocked inter-regional grain shipments to preserve local supplies and, in doing so, induced the collapse of the PDS as the system came under stress. In the RFA piece, Andrei Lankov, once a booster of the 28 June measures, is quoted to the effect that the grain seizures may not be due to central government policies, but rather reflect the behavior of local officials under pressure to meet PDS contribution quotas. Easier to steal from the farmers than admit that the co-ops under your administration haven’t met their targets.
To further complicate the picture, NK News has reported that cereal imports from China are down (and do not appear to have been offset by increased imports from other sources). North Korea has never imported a lot of raw cereals from China--rice doesn't count as a cereal and wheat is usually imported as flour--nevertheless, the figures cited in the NK News piece seem low. According to the source, North Korea last year imported less than $10 million in cereals from China—which makes one wonder if the Chinese allergy to reporting accurate oil trade statistics now extends to food.
Either way it suggests that North Korea continues to stumble forward through the new normal of plenty for some and not enough for others.
