As international cereal prices continue to rise, the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries has come up with a plan to increase the production of winter cereals, such as wheat and barley, and coarse fodders.

The ministry’s response calls for increasing the sown areas of winter grains and roughage from 250,000 hectares last year to around 300,000 hectares this year using farmland that lies idle in winter.

The ministry seeks to boost the self-sufficiency rate of wheat from 2 percent to more than 6 percent and that of barley from 18 percent to around 27 percent. The target for coarse fodders is 87 percent, up from the current 81 percent.

The ministry’s measure follows a surge in world grain prices in recent months. In July, the Cereal Price Index of the Food and Agriculture Organization hit 260, up 38 points from June. The index rose further to 263 in September, approaching the all-time high of 274 registered in April 2008.

The big jump was fueled by a drop in world cereal production due to severe droughts in the United States and across a large part of Europe and into central Asia. The FAO recently forecast that global cereal production in 2012 would be 2.6 percent down from the record crop in 2011.

The United Nations agency predicted that the decrease would result in a significant reduction in world cereal inventories, putting pressure on grain prices. High prices would reduce cereal demand to some degree. Yet the FAO warned that supplies would tighten further next year.

In a tight supply situation, abnormal weather events in key crop-exporting countries could spark a major food crisis, which in turn could trigger social unrest in importing countries, as did the food shortages in 2008 and 2010.

It is against this backdrop that the ministry announced the cereal production plan. Yet the measure is belated and unlikely to significantly reduce the nation’s vulnerability to growing global grain prices.

Global cereal prices begun to increase since 2007. Yet Korea’s cereal self-sufficiency rate has continued to fall. In 2005, Korea met about 30 percent of its grain demand with local produce. In 2010, the rate fell to below 28 percent. Last year it plummeted to 22.6 percent, an all-time low, making Korea least self-sufficient among OECD countries.

Korea relies almost entirely on imports for wheat and corn. Imports also account for more than 90 percent of the nation’s demand for beans.

As such, changes in global cereal prices directly affect domestic food prices. According to the Korea Rural Economic Institute, the recent rise in wheat prices is expected to jack up the prices of a wide array of foods, ranging from cookies, bread and noodles to meat, milk, ice cream and tofu, beginning next month.

Following the 2008 and 2010 food crises, the government announced a set of measures to reduce the nation’s vulnerability. Last year, it raised the cereal self-sufficiency target rate for 2015 from the previous 25 percent to 30 percent.

Yet the government did not follow up the revised plan with any effective measures. This was starkly evidenced by the unusually large drop, rather than an increase, in the self-sufficiency rate last year.

To increase grain self-sufficiency, the government should first expand crop land and prevent farmland from being converted into land for other purposes. Then it should provide incentives for farmers to grow cereals. It also needs to find ways to use the increased cereal output.

At the same time, the government needs to encourage Korean companies to invest in food production overseas. Earlier this month, the ministry unveiled a plan to produce 7 million tons of cereals overseas by 2021 to cover 35 percent of the nation’s demand.

To attain this goal, private companies’ investment is essential. Last week, Hyundai Energy and Resources set an encouraging example. The company partnered with International Finance Corp., the investment arm of the World Bank, to finance its plan to build overseas food production bases.

Hyundai currently cultivates 20,000 hectares of farmland in the Russian Far East. Its long-term goal is to secure 100,000 hectares of crop land each in Russia, Ukraine and Argentina. Other Korean companies need to emulate the company’s ambitious plan.