Development of Specialized Services such as Support for Young Farmers to Settle Down

Overview

This initiative aims to support the early establishment of young farmers in agricultural operations by addressing challenges arising from the increasing proportion of elderly populations in rural areas and the lack of agricultural technology experience among young farmers. It also seeks to improve rural aging.

The Rural Development Administration built an agricultural technology consultation chatbot based on a super-large AI language model (June 2024) to provide 24/7 agricultural technology consultation services. This initiative alleviated the burden of agricultural failure for young farmers and supported efficient, data-driven farming practices.

Project description

To provide farming information quickly and easily to farmers and the general public, the Rural Development Administration's mobile app 'Latest Agricultural Technology Notifier' has integrated a hyper-scale AI-based service. Following review by farming experts and preliminary evaluation by young farmers, the official service launched in February 2025, available 24/7, 365 days a year to anyone.

• Agricultural Encyclopedia: Developed a service that summarizes and facilitates easy search of information based on agricultural manuals held by the Rural Development Administration and the Nongsaro website (www.nongsaro.go.kr) when agricultural technology queries are made via chatbot conversation.
• Agricultural Education: Provides the latest farming information through video content, tailored to users (considering region, crops grown, etc.), enabling easy acquisition of farming techniques from cultivation to harvest.
• Farming Design: Developed to support early farming establishment, this service offers customized consulting for crop selection—the most challenging aspect for young farmers— along with initial investment costs, budgets, and income. It utilizes income information compiled and analyzed by the Rural Development Administration over many years.
• Smart Alerts: One of the hardest parts of crop cultivation is when hard-grown crops become unsellable due to constantly changing weather and pest outbreaks. Young farmers, especially those with limited experience, often struggle to prepare for seasonal pests and diseases, leading to greater losses. This service uses massive AI to send immediate alerts with weekly pest occurrence information and weather forecasts, helping young farmers prevent agricultural risks.

Key technological features

• Information Provision: Data-driven personalized LLM guidance based on user location, products, crop seasons, etc.
• LLM: Utilizes HyperCLOVA with over 97% Korean language coverage.
• MLOps: Supports stable automation for optimization, deployment, and operational management to connect machine learning models to services.

Expected outcomes

In 2024, the study analyzed 467 volumes of agricultural technology publications, and aims to analyze a cumulative total of 760 volumes by 2025. Through continuous learning from the agricultural encyclopedia, the project is expected to improve performance (speed, answer satisfaction) in question-answering.

Using this ultra-large AI service will reduce the burden of agricultural failure for novice farmers and enable efficient farming based on the high-quality data from the Rural Development Administration. It is also expected to provide accurate information to individuals planning to return to farming or rural areas, supporting the early settlement of young farmers in rural communities and injecting vitality into rural areas threatened by depopulation and aging. Furthermore, it will contribute to stabilizing crop supply and demand through yield and profit analysis.

To enhance user satisfaction, this project plans to provide more accurate information and diverse data in response to user queries through additional training and expert verification of answers. The project will particularly strive to make farming techniques, which were previously perceived as difficult, more accessible by developing additional content tailored to the needs of both the general public and farmers. Training programs are being planned through the institutions' own education centers to facilitate utilization by 155 local agricultural agencies and agriculture-related universities.

Launch year: 2024

Attribution

Case study courtesy of the National Information Society Agency, Republic of Korea, Apolitical's Content Partner. Sourced from Use Cases of Public AI Service, Vol.1,  https://eng.nia.or.kr/site/nia_eng/ex/bbs/View.do?cbIdx=31975&bcIdx=28997&parentSeq=29012