Candidate Park Gyuntaek's Ninth Promise: 'Support for Farmers and Retailers'

Operation of Outdoor Agricultural Products Direct Market

Expected Mutual Benefit Increase for Farmers and Retailers

Park Gyuntaek, the Democratic Party preliminary candidate for Gwangsan-gu (Gap), Gwangju Metropolitan City, presented ‘Support for Farmers and Retailers’ as his ninth policy pledge.

On the 5th, Park announced at his campaign office, with attendance from agricultural producers and others, the plan to ‘Create income for farmers and retailers through the operation of an outdoor direct agricultural product market.’

Park stated, “Even if farms in the development-restricted areas of Gwangsan-gu supply agricultural products at low prices under difficult conditions, consumers end up paying high prices due to the intermediate distribution process, which only benefits the middlemen wholesalers.” He added, “Producers should receive fair prices, and retailers should minimize middle margins to generate real income.”

He intends to increase mutual additional profits for producers and retailers by omitting the intermediate distribution through direct transactions between them.

To this end, he mentioned utilizing farmland around Donggok-ro in Donggok-dong, Gwangsan-gu, to establish an outdoor direct agricultural product market covering approximately 1,000 pyeong.

He analyzed that about 3.3 billion KRW would be required in total, including approximately 2.5 billion KRW for land purchase and about 800 million KRW for construction costs.

Preliminary candidate Park Gyuntaek also proposed forming a promotion council with producers, administrative agencies, and the NongHyup (National Agricultural Cooperative Federation) to prepare facility and operation plans, securing funds through private investments such as NongHyup and simultaneously obtaining rural national support project funds to cover expenses.