What is agricultural economics, and how does it contribute to modern economic development, environmental policy, and more?

Agricultural economics is a discipline that traditionally analyzes agricultural and rural issues using economic methodologies, but nowadays it studies various fields such as economic development, international trade, resource management, and environmental policy, and combines field-oriented research and training to develop theory and solve real-world problems.

 

My name is @@@ and I am majoring in Agricultural Economics at the School of Agricultural Economics and Sociology. I entered the school in 2020, so it’s been quite a while already, but I still find it difficult to figure out what my major is. Recently, Snulife, a community for undergraduate students at SNU, posted a post asking students to show off their majors, and I remember laughing when I saw a comment from someone who said he was an industrial engineering major, saying that even his professor didn’t know what his major was. I don’t think I’m much different from that person, but I still have to do my best, right? Each department has an article on their homepage that introduces their major. My major is one of the few majors in Korea, so I carefully studied the introduction before I went to the interview. Based on the introduction on the department’s website, I would like to tell you what the agricultural economics major is like.
Traditionally, agricultural economics is a discipline that mainly analyzes agricultural, rural, and farmer issues using economic methodologies. However, due to the changing role of agriculture and rural areas and economic phenomena, as well as the academic development of agricultural economics itself, agricultural economics has evolved into a representative applied economics that studies a wide variety of fields, including not only traditional agricultural production and consumption, but also economic development, international trade, resource development and management, environmental economic policies, food and agriculture-related industries, regional balanced development, technological innovation promotion, and human resource development. In addition to these diverse topics, the major is expanding its research to include food issues in North and Northeast Asia and international agricultural issues, and combines field-oriented research and training to develop relevant theories and diagnose real-world economic problems and find ways to improve them.
The Department of Agricultural Economics and Sociology is divided into the major of Agricultural Economics and the major of Regional Information upon entering the second year, and recently the major of Agricultural Economics was renamed to the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, effective for students entering in 2011. As the name suggests, agricultural economics is a major related to agriculture and economics. You can simply think of it as dealing with issues related to agriculture but utilizing economics as a methodology. Agricultural economics is used to analyze how the signing of free trade agreements affects agriculture in Korea, how the price of agricultural products is determined, how subsidy policies help farmers, and so on. And it’s not limited to agriculture and economics, because if it were, it wouldn’t be possible to cover all the topics listed above.
To major in agricultural economics, you need to complete a variety of general economic theories, basic courses in math and statistics, and basic knowledge of business administration, law, sociology, etc. depending on your interests. After taking these basic courses, students majoring in agricultural economics take courses in traditional agricultural subjects such as agricultural production economics, agricultural management, agricultural commodity price analysis, agricultural commodity distribution, agricultural policy theory, and agricultural development theory, as well as applied economic subjects such as international trade theory, resource economics, environmental economics, regional economics, agricultural futures market analysis, agricultural-related industry theory, technological economics, and human resource economics.

 

 

The program encourages students to learn about social sciences, including economics, so you can think of it as looking at the problems of agriculture through the lens of social sciences. Social sciences may sound like a big word, but they are different perspectives (or disciplines) that look at society. You can think of economics, psychology, business administration, law, sociology, political science, etc. The departments of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences are all natural science departments, except for the Department of Agricultural Economics and Sociology. If the other majors in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences focus on science and technology, it would not be unreasonable to say that the Department of Agricultural Economics and Social Sciences focuses on humanities and social aspects.
Graduates of this major are leaders in various fields of society due to their academic diversity and problem-solving skills. The major has provided an overwhelming majority of the workforce for related academia and researchers, and graduates have gone on to work in a wide range of positions in private companies and financial institutions, as well as in relationships, public companies, and cooperatives.
Students in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, as well as those in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Sociology, are sure to be asked at least once, “Are you going to farm when you graduate?” There are quite a few graduates who do farm, and I’ve seen quite a few who are involved in entrepreneurial farming or pig farming, but it’s not the kind of farming that people think. They continue their studies and teach students or work in academia, such as the Agricultural Economics Society or the Agricultural Policy Society, or in research institutes, such as the Korea Rural Economic Research Institute. Since they study economics basically and graduate with a bachelor’s degree in economics, they often enter general companies, including large corporations, or financial institutions such as banks and securities. There are also many who enter the public sector through administrative announcements, such as agricultural public corporations such as the Korea Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Distribution Corporation and financial public corporations such as the Financial Supervisory Service. There are also quite a few who enter the agricultural cooperatives and enter the economic business or credit business. As you can see, there are many different career paths for graduates of the Department of Agricultural Economics and Sociology.
The Department of Agricultural Economics and Sociology is a very mixed and unique department that is non-mainstream in terms of studying agriculture, but mainstream in terms of studying economics. Only national universities have departments of agricultural economics, and there are similar departments of applied economics, industrial economics, and so on, but they don’t study agricultural economics as much as the Department of Agricultural Economics and Sociology.
Arnold Toynbee wrote history in terms of challenges and responses, and it’s true that agriculture is certainly facing many challenges right now. However, if this is the challenge that Toynbee talked about, the future of agriculture will be very different depending on how we respond to it. That means that there is a lot of room for agricultural economics to develop. I hope that many people will be interested in the department of agricultural economics, and I am proud of my field of study and want to be a person who contributes not only to agriculture but also to society as a whole.
Agricultural economics is not just an academic discipline; research and practice in the field are important to solve practical problems. Analyzing practical problems in the agricultural field and developing policies and strategies to solve them is the ultimate goal of our discipline. To this end, students are engaged in various field practicums and research projects to develop realistic problem-solving skills. Through this process, we are developing professionals with practical problem-solving skills, not just theoretical knowledge.
We look forward to your interest in the Department of Agricultural Economics!