The North Hwanghae Province Agricultural Guidance Bureau recently sent a directive to farms urging them to spray pesticides on wheat and barley planted last fall, Daily NK has learned.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a source in North Hwanghae Province said last Wednesday that the provincial agricultural community finance committee sent the directive to all local farms last month, instructing them “not to miss the important time,” referring to the approaching period for spraying pesticides to crops planted last fall.
According to the source, the directive reiterated the importance of farming with the coming spring, when wheat and barley mature, and urged farmers to use pesticides at the appropriate time. It also urged them to hold “technical workshops” on pesticide use.
The order told farms to hold two-hour workshops every day, because while spraying pesticides is something farms do every year, full-scale cultivation of wheat and barley began only two years ago and is somewhat different from rice farming, the source said.
In a policy speech to the Supreme People’s Assembly in September 2021, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called for doubling the area under wheat and barley nationwide and increasing the area under rice to enable “civilized improvement” of the food situation by increasing harvests and providing white rice and wheat flour to the people.
Although farmers responded by increasing wheat and barley acreage, production of these crops did not increase significantly in 2022 or 2023.
Accordingly, the provincial agricultural community finance committee seems to be paying attention to this spring’s grain farming, issuing a special order to boost wheat and barley production.
Farms ordered to minimize crop damage as much as possible