Extreme heat and torrential rain are deepening production uncertainty for greenhouse vegetable farmers across South Korea, yet the spread of smart-farm technology meant to address those risks remains sluggish, a new report shows. While basic infrastructure is in place on many farms, adoption of advanced equipment — sensors, monitoring systems and automated decision-making tools — remains low. Upfront investment costs and uncertainty about returns are holding farmers back, and analysts say support tailored to individual crops such as strawberries and tomatoes is urgently needed.
A report published Tuesday by the Korea Rural Economic Institute (KREI), titled "Analysis of Greenhouse Vegetable Farmers' Willingness to Adopt Climate-Change Response Technologies and Its Implications," found that as seasonal disasters compound and accumulate under climate change, production volatility driven by external weather conditions is rising even inside greenhouse facilities. Although the government has been developing and distributing smart-farm systems and climate-adaptive multi-trait crop varieties, actual adoption rates among farmers remain low and the spread of high-cost equipment is limited, the report said.
Researchers examined adoption rates and willingness to adopt climate-change response technologies among strawberry and tomato growers. High upfront investment costs and revenue uncertainty were identified as the main barriers to smart-farm uptake, while concerns about yield and product quality, along with a lack of cultivation expertise, were cited as the chief obstacles to climate-adaptive variety adoption.
Cost was a particularly heavy burden. Among farmers who had not adopted smart-farm equipment, 62.8 percent of strawberry growers and 54.9 percent of tomato growers named upfront costs as the single biggest constraint. Ongoing maintenance and management costs were cited by 16.0 percent of strawberry farmers and 18.5 percent of tomato farmers. Uncertainty about how effective the technology would actually be was cited by 8.2 percent of strawberry growers and 13.9 percent of tomato growers. The findings suggest that barriers to smart-farm adoption lie not only in the technology itself but also in farmers' uncertainty about investment costs and future returns.
Even within the same category of greenhouse crops, adoption patterns differed markedly between strawberries and tomatoes.
Tomato farms moved toward smart-farm adoption primarily through equipment directly tied to production. Actuators had the highest adoption rate at 58.9 percent, followed by nutrient solution and fertigation systems at 41.9 percent, and integrated monitoring and indoor environment sensors each at 34.1 percent. By contrast, supplemental lighting — a relatively expensive item — was limited to 8.5 percent, and automated decision-making systems to just 7.8 percent.
Strawberry farms showed weaker smart-farm foundations even at the basic level. Nutrient solution and fertigation systems were adopted by 47.7 percent of growers and actuators by 45.0 percent, but integrated monitoring and indoor environment sensors each reached only 27.5 percent, while outdoor environment sensors stood at 19.3 percent. Supplemental lighting and automated decision-making systems were adopted by just 13.8 percent and 11.0 percent of growers, respectively.
The gap extended to future intentions as well. Among tomato farmers who had not yet adopted smart-farm equipment, willingness to do so scored 2.4 to 2.7 out of 5. Strawberry farmers scored lower, at 1.7 to 1.9. The results suggest that simply distributing already-developed technology is unlikely on its own to translate into actual adoption on the farm.
How farmers absorb new technology also varied by crop. Tomato growers showed a higher overall willingness to adopt new technologies than strawberry growers. For both crops, training and guidance from agricultural technology centers played an important role in technology acquisition and diffusion, but strawberry farmers were found to be relatively more influenced by neighboring farms and field-level networks.
Direct hands-on experience with technology also shaped adoption decisions. Strawberry farmers who had personally experienced climate disasters, or who expressed willingness to participate in pilot projects, showed stronger intent to adopt smart-farm systems. For tomato farmers, willingness to join pilot projects was closely linked to technology acceptance for both smart farms and climate-adaptive varieties. The analysis drew on a total of 145 farms — 70 strawberry and 75 tomato operations. However, the researchers cautioned that because the analysis relied on observational data, the relationships between variables should not be interpreted as direct causal effects.
Climate-adaptive varieties capable of withstanding extreme heat and other weather events also proved difficult to win over farmers on the basis of climate resilience alone. Growers weighed yield, product quality, market preference and cultivation difficulty together when choosing new varieties. For strawberries in particular, the environmental sensitivity of new premium varieties and their high cultivation difficulty added to the burden of adoption.
The researchers accordingly recommended moving away from a one-size-fits-all approach to distributing smart farms and climate-adaptive varieties, and instead tailoring support to the conditions of each crop. For strawberries, the priority should be expanding basic infrastructure such as sensors and monitoring systems while building farmers' operational capacity. For tomatoes, where the facility base is relatively better established, the more effective path is adding advanced equipment to existing smart-farm setups and improving utilization.
The researchers also said climate-adaptive varieties need to reflect not only resilience to extreme heat and heavy rain but also the factors farmers actually weigh when choosing a variety — ease of cultivation, yield and product quality. Expanding local-level demonstration and pilot projects so that farmers can use the technology firsthand and verify its effects was also highlighted as important.
"For climate-change response technologies, the process of making them something farmers can confidently use in the field matters more than the development itself," said Kim Tae-hyeon, an associate research fellow at KREI. "If we expand customized support that reflects crop-specific characteristics and broaden field-centered demonstration and pilot projects, we can improve the effectiveness of smart-farm and climate-adaptive variety distribution and strengthen the sustainability of greenhouse horticulture."
adastra@heraldcorp.com
