21. Korea
This dashboard is a tool to visualise the evolution of selected environmental indicators related to agricultural activities in OECD countries and it contains seven sections: i) summary of key characteristics of the agricultural sector; ii) agricultural land use change; iii) production and input use; iv) nutrients; v) greenhouse gas emissions; vi) ammonia emissions; and vii) farmland birds biodiversity.
The agriculture characteristics section presents a short summary of the agricultural context, focusing on agricultural land and cropland as well as livestock and irrigated area indicators. The agricultural land use change section focuses on total agricultural land, cropland, and pasture. The production and input use panel shows trends of agricultural production and input use indicators. Production is measured using the agricultural production index of FAO. Inputs are expressed on a per-hectare basis to control for the size of agricultural land. The nutrient balances section shows long-term trends in nitrogen and phosphorus balances and efficiency of use; nutrient balance indicators can act as a signal for the potential environmental impact of agriculture on air, soil and water. The section on greenhouse gas emissions presents long-term trends of total greenhouse gas emissions and emissions intensity. Agricultural activities contribute to global warming by emitting nitrous oxide and methane, two powerful greenhouse gases. The ammonia emissions section presents trends of agricultural ammonia emissions, which are associated with two major types of environmental problems: acidification of soil and water and eutrophication of water bodies. The farmland birds biodiversity section shows the trends of the farmland birds index, which is used as a proxy for farmland biodiversity, although this is not suitable in all contexts (e.g. where birdlife includes invasive species).
FAOSTAT (2021), “Food and agriculture data”, http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/ (accessed April 2021) for livestock units, gross value of production and agricultural production index.
UNFCCC (2020), “Greenhouse gas inventory database”, https://di.unfccc.int/ghg_profile_annex1 (accessed on September 2020) for greenhouse gas emissions.
OECD (2021), “Agri-environmental indicators database”, http://www.oecd.org/agriculture/topics/agriculture-and-the-environment/ (accessed April 2021) for all other indicators.
OECD (2019), “Trends and drivers of agri-environmental performance in OECD countries”, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/b59b1142-en.
Methodologies to measure indicators are not well-established in all cases and may differ across countries. Caution must be exercised in comparing the evolution of indicators across countries, as a given change in a particular indicator may have differing effects depending on the specific context. In some cases, indicators may differ from official statistics due to methodological differences. For some countries, some sections and figures are omitted due to lack of data. To account for differences in the size of OECD countries, the scales of the figures are different across countries and the performance of a given country is compared to that of the median OECD. Nevertheless, national-level data can conceal significant subnational differences and variations in indicators may not necessarily reflect the impact of policies. To minimise the effect of weather or market shocks on indicators levels, the dashboard presents multi-year trends.