North Korean farmers ditch food crops for cash crops as market logic takes hold

North Korean farmers in parts of North Pyongan province are increasingly abandoning staple food crops on their private plots in favor of higher-value cash crops, signaling a broader shift in rural survival strategy from subsistence farming to market-oriented production.

According to a Daily NK source in North Pyongan province on Wednesday, the trend is most visible around Kujang county’s Sangri Industrial Crop Farm, a state-run facility specializing in crops used as industrial raw materials. On private garden plots and small personal landholdings known as sotoji (informal private plots cultivated outside the state plan), farmers have been increasingly growing industrial crops such as tobacco and castor bean, as well as medicinal herbs including deodeok (a native bellflower root), bellflower, yam, and gastrodia.

In the past, these plots were devoted almost exclusively to basic food crops such as corn, soybeans, potatoes, and sweet potatoes. Now, farmers are restructuring their private cultivation along practical lines: medicinal crops on hillside terraces and slopes, and industrial crops closer to home on flat garden land.

From subsistence to market: a shift in rural strategy

The source said farmers in other rural areas near industrial crop farms are closely watching farm management practices and trying to apply them to their own plots. “Rather than just growing food like before, the trend toward planting crops that make money has become unmistakable,” the source said.

Some farmers are informally obtaining seeds, cultivation techniques, and pest management know-how from state farm workers, then applying them on their private plots. The Workers’ Party of Korea promotes the principles of “right crop for the right place” and “right crop for the right time” as part of its agricultural policy, and the state’s push to expand industrial crop production has created an opening that farmers are exploiting for personal gain.

“Industrial crops fetch a higher price than regular food crops because they’re used as raw materials for local factories,” the source said, noting that sayings like “one plot of tobacco beats a few rows of corn” and “an herb field is more valuable land” have spread among farming communities.

The source added that North Korean farmers are increasingly prioritizing cash income over subsistence, focusing on what will sell at the jangmadang (informal markets) rather than what they will eat. “There’s a change where people are thinking about how to get the most out of the effort, time, and land they have,” the source said.

Observers on the ground describe the shift as more than just a change in what gets planted. They say it reflects a fundamental transformation in how rural North Koreans relate to the economy, moving away from passive compliance with state directives and toward a calculating, market-aware approach to household income.

Some voices of caution have emerged, however. Without sufficient expertise in specialty crop cultivation, farmers who fail to turn a profit could end up deepening their financial burdens rather than alleviating them. Even so, the source said the craze for cash crops is likely to continue for the foreseeable future, driven by the urgent need for ready money in North Korea’s countryside.

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