"We Are Future Partners for Joint Growth in Agricultural Start-ups!"

Jeonbuk National University (JBNU) Specialized Agricultural Start-up Project Group (Director Professor In-ho Hwang, Department of Animal Science), which has nurtured the incubation model ONE-YEAH (Horticulture) Cooperative (Chairperson Kim Dae-jun, 4th-year student, Department of Horticulture), met with young farmers from Chonnam National University on the 2nd to lay the groundwork for mutual growth through exchange.

ONE-YEAH (Horticulture) Cooperative is a cooperative established in 2018 led by students participating in JBNU’s Specialized Agricultural Start-up Project Group. It was formed to strengthen practical competencies in horticulture for agricultural start-ups and to create jobs.

The meeting with young farmers was organized through mutual cooperation between JBNU’s Specialized Agricultural Start-up Project Group and Chonnam National University SMART Specialized Agricultural Start-up Project Group (Director Professor Tae-ho Han, Department of Horticultural Life Science and Biotechnology). The purpose was to discover prospective young farmers through exchanges with entrepreneurial young farmers and to support their sustained growth and development.

On the weekend of the 2nd, JBNU’s ONE-YEAH (Horticulture) Cooperative visited Chonnam National University’s incubation farm and met with three farms that completed Chonnam National University SMART Project Group’s regular course and were cultivated through the young farmer incubation program: Ajin Farm (Gokseong), PureutPureut (Naju), and Matdia Farm & Tomato Land (Naju).

Chonnam National University’s incubation farm uses information and communication technology (ICT) to cultivate crops directly and allows participants to experience sales through a plant village and cooperative. The incubation farm currently consists of four facilities, including a hydroponic leafy-vegetable cultivation room and smart greenhouses for tomatoes and hydrangeas.  

This visit provided an opportunity to benchmark agricultural start-up cases using protected-culture crops such as strawberries, tomatoes, and melons, to lay a foundation for realizing agricultural start-ups, and to reinforce participants’ commitment to settling in agricultural work.

Jo Woo-seok, a student in the ONE-YEAH (Horticulture) Cooperative’s vegetable crop team who oversees melon cultivation activities (3rd-year student, Department of Horticulture; 3rd cohort of the Specialized Agricultural Start-up Project Group), said, "Students who dream of launching agricultural start-ups had time to meet actual young entrepreneurial farmers, share similar concerns, and empathize with one another. Starting with this meeting, I hope to strengthen relationships through continued exchanges and become partners who will lead future agriculture."

Meanwhile, JBNU’s Specialized Agricultural Start-up Project Group is an educational program supported by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs and the Korea Agency of Education, Culture and Information for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. The program selects students aiming for employment or entrepreneurship in the livestock and horticulture sectors and provides specialized coursework and extracurricular programs that deliver professional theory and field practice. Five universities nationwide participate, and JBNU has been operating the program for seven years.