Gumi City Invests 7 Billion Won... Fostering Food Activists → Realizing Agricultural Transformation

Basic Plan for Rural New Vitality Plus Project Approved by Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry

Former Sangmosagok-dong Office ... Establishment of Gumi Food Hub

The Rural New Vitality Plus Project in Gumi-si, Gyeongbuk Province recently received approval for the basic plan from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, and the Gyeongbuk Digital Innovation Agricultural Town project targeting the Unggok-ri area in Mueul-myeon has entered the implementation phase. This marks the beginning of a major agricultural transformation in Gumi-si, aimed at creating food policies and re-generating agricultural income through joint farming.

Comprehensive New Vitality Plan Map of Gumi City.

The Rural New Vitality Plus Project is a program designed to complement the failure factors of existing region development projects focused on building structures by utilizing tangible and intangible local resources and private organizations to support citizens' creative projects.

The Gumi-si Rural New Vitality Plus Project pursues the vision of "Realizing a Food Well-being City in Gumi through Rural-Urban Symbiosis," aiming to create a virtuous cycle of Gumi agricultural products' value and to promote citizens' health and happy lives. It will be actively promoted from 2024 in connection with Gumi's key policy, the Food Plan, to establish growth momentum for Gumi's food sector and to build a Gumi where rural and urban areas can coexist harmoniously.

The city plans to invest 7 billion KRW by 2025 to implement nine projects across three fields annually. Key initiatives include establishing the Value Sharing Gumi Food Hub as a base facility, fostering rural-urban symbiotic communities, and expanding awareness of the importance of local food through the Gumi Food Value Expansion Project.

The Gumi Food Hub, to be built on the site of the former Sangmo Sagok-dong government office, will be a three-story building comprising food experience spaces, community nurturing areas, and community exchange zones. Through this, it will secure activity spaces for communities to spread the value of Gumi food, serve as a community space for citizens' food experiences and the dissemination of food-agriculture values, and function as a space to activate the economic independence of communities.

To foster rural-urban symbiotic communities, the city will support 20 communities annually to create value inherent in Gumi food and realize a people-centered cooperative economy based on Gumi food value through business support.

Even before the basic plan approval, the city has been discovering communities necessary for the project through community capacity-building education and the New Vitality Academy, and plans to nurture sustainable rural communities even after the project ends.

The New Vitality Academy, aimed at cultivating food activists, is being prepared for the first and second halves of the year. It will provide education on understanding the New Vitality project, understanding and establishing corporations, and practical business planning. Anyone interested in the project can participate.

Through the Gyeongbuk Digital Innovation Agricultural Town project, selected in the 2022 provincial public contest, the city is making every effort to transform the stagnating rural village environment caused by aging and accelerating decline in the number of farms.

About 30 hectares of farmland will improve cropping systems and production spaces by shifting from single rice cropping to double cropping (soybeans, wheat, forage crops). Plans include creating added value through small packaging sales of products using idle labor and producing processed goods using soybeans. The Mueul Haetsalchan Agricultural Cooperative Corporation (CEO Yang Won-ho) will lead efforts to add about 20 hectares of joint farming area in 2024.

The Digital Innovation Agricultural Town in Unggok-ri, Mueul-myeon, has a total project cost of 1.65 billion KRW, which will be used for establishing joint farming infrastructure (facilities, equipment, processing plant), brand development, and marketing support.

By linking processing startup education programs with village development projects, and upon approval of detailed project plans and completion of implementation, it is expected that the village will become a vibrant rural community with economic synergy effects from higher added income and the influx of young farmers.

Mayor Kim Jang-ho stated, "We will create a vibrant and livable rural area by preparing a major transformation of agriculture and rural areas into future food industries through the Rural New Vitality Plus Project, Food Plan, Agricultural Innovation Town establishment, Rural Agreement, and rural water development in the Sanjang district, realizing a food well-being city through rural-urban symbiosis."