CHANGWON — Sweet persimmon farmers in South Gyeongsang Province face a dilemma over what to do with fruit scarred by sunburn as record heat spreads damage across their orchards. Removing the fruit quickly is necessary to prevent secondary damage such as disease and pests, but taking it off the trees before a loss assessment can disqualify it from compensation under crop disaster insurance.
Heat damage to crops in the province totaled 2,851 hectares across 7,510 farms as of Aug. 17, according to the provincial government and the provincial council on the 3rd. Sweet persimmons accounted for 1,691 hectares at 4,809 farms, or about 59% of the total damaged area. Of the 1,696.7 hectares of sweet persimmon damage reported nationwide, 99.7% was in South Gyeongsang Province.
At issue is how loss assessments are conducted. Farmers must thin out unmarketable damaged fruit immediately to prevent disease and pests and to allow healthy fruit to develop, but removing it before an assessment means the actual scale of the damage cannot be verified and may be excluded from compensation. As a result, farmers are left either leaving the damaged fruit on the trees at the risk of secondary damage such as anthracnose, or removing it and giving up on compensation.
The provincial council's Agriculture, Fisheries and Marine Affairs Committee has called on the central government to overhaul the loss assessment system for sunburn damage to sweet persimmons. The committee plans to adopt a petition to the central government urging reform of the crop disaster insurance survey system for sunburn damage at the first session of the 436th regular meeting of the provincial council on Sept. 7. The committee concluded that the current assessment method does not adequately reflect conditions on the ground.
"Damage surveys should be based on actual farming conditions, not on administrative convenience," committee chair Lee Kyung-jae said. "The survey system must be reformed to fit reality so that farmers can receive fair compensation."
