The South Korean government’s historical efforts to introduce improved crop varieties have been ambiguously successful. State-bred rice varieties helped achieve national food production goals during the Green Revolution of the 1970s, but these varieties were highly unpopular and were abandoned soon, as the government stopped promoting them. This paper contrasts that experience with the simultaneous successful introduction of an improved variety of tangerine (Citrus unshiu) as a cash crop in Jeju Province. Smallholders of Jeju found space for the high-return fruit in the existing land use system, including the partial conservation of agrobiodiversity without critically risking their subsistence-based food security. Citrus in general was a spatially less-demanding crop that farmers could partly co-cultivate with subsistence crops, while state-bred rice varieties occupied farmland exclusive of other varieties and rice’s double crops. Additionally, by employing political ecology, this paper asserts that the different roles of the state in introducing the two crops and the different regions were other factors behind such divergent adoption outcomes. Considering rice, the state was highly interventionist, because the government depended on rice-producing regions to “feed the nation”; with regard to non-staple-crop production in low-productivity, hard-to-develop regions like Jeju, in contrast, the government gave farmers more autonomy, thus allowing farmers to determine their own space and pace for citrus adoption. The study critically investigates the variable of spatial compatibility between a crop and the land system and sheds light on the current development mission to harmonize the cultivation of food and cash crops.

韩国政府在引进改良作物品种方面的历史努力取得了明显的成功。国家培育的水稻品种在 1970 年代的绿色革命期间帮助实现了国家粮食生产目标，但由于政府停止推广，这些品种非常不受欢迎并很快被放弃。本文将这一经验与同时成功引进改良品种柑橘 ( Citrus unshiu) 作为济州省的经济作物。济州岛的小农在现有的土地利用系统中找到了高回报水果的空间，包括部分保护农业生物多样性，而不会给他们以维持生计的粮食安全带来严重风险。一般来说，柑橘是一种对空间要求不高的作物，农民可以部分地与自给作物共同种植，而国家培育的水稻品种占据农田，不包括其他品种和水稻的双季作物。此外，本文通过运用政治生态学，断言国家在引进​​两种作物和不同地区方面的不同作用是造成这种不同采用结果的其他因素。就大米而言，国家是高度干预主义的，因为政府依赖大米产区“养家糊口”；相比之下，在济州等低生产力、难开发地区的副作物生产方面，政府给予农民更多的自主权，从而让农民可以自主决定种植柑橘的空间和步伐。该研究批判性地研究了作物与土地系统之间空间兼容性的变量，并阐明了当前协调粮食和经济作物种植的发展使命。