Both farmers and consumers can benefit from the provision of more accurate price forecasting in unstable vegetable market. Focusing on the role of climate factors, which is expected to impact on vegetable price, this study develops price forecasting models for napa cabbage using Bayesian Structural Time Series (BSTS) and Vector Autoregressive (VAR) approaches. Across forecasting models, we show the consideration of climate factors enhances forecasting power significantly compared to pure time series models. BSTS and VAR can be used mutually complementarily by providing various forecasting scenarios based on market conditions.

This study applies a collective household model to a Korean micro-level food consumption data set to analyze married couple's food consumption economies of scale. Economies of scale measures are estimated for various sized families. The study also estimates the degree to which female controls household food expenditure and identifies its determinants. The study found that there are substantial differences in food preferences among family members. The degree of economies of scale is also quite substantial and depends on family size and other characteristics. Female's control over household food expenditure is much larger than male's, but a declining tendency is observed.

Korean Agricultural Cooperatives have been recognized as a successful case of agricultural cooperative in the world. Although they have made many trior and errors until the construction of organizational structure, they have successfully grown the businesses and achieved development since establishment of multipurpose cooperative in 1961. The government has supported the agricultural cooperatives through providing institutional arrangements and backing their businesses. They also carried out effectively a kind of policy agency role for the government. However, the government controls on them in early stage of development severly deteriorated the autonomy of cooperatives for the long times. The Agricultural Cooperatives are facing challenges to overcome difficulties of themselves as well as the problems of agricultural sector suffered from growth stagnation and low income. The National Agricultural Cooperatives Federation recently made a structural reform introducing holding companies to promote its competitiveness and economic businesses for members in 2012. Strengthening cooperative identity also is a major challenge to achieve in the near future.

The effects of ASEAN-Korea FTA on the Philippines-Korea agri-food trade is examined using the gravity model, and a trade growth decomposition technique is explored to isolate the net effects of the FTA from the other sources of trade growth. The gravity model is specifically appropriate in analyzing ex post FTA effects since trade growth decomposition can be easily derived, proving the claim of previous literatures regarding the explanatory power of the model. Empirical results show that the ASEAN-Korea FTA has created trade between the Philippines and Korea and contributed to the growth of trade, the extent of which depends on the margin by which tariff is reduced and the substitutability of traded goods. Consequently, the balance of trade between the two countries widened in favor of Philippine agri-food exports due to the wider margin by which import tariff is reduced in Korea.