Evaluating Technological Progress and Energy Consumption in Korean Agricultural Sectors: An Application of the Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model Approach

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study investigates the relationship between energy consumption, technological progress, value-added agriculture, and arable land in the Korean agricultural sector. We introduce an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model to examine the short- and long-run relationships among variables using a bounds test. We found that an increase in agricultural Total Factor Productivity (TFP) is associated with a 0.021% decrease in energy consumption in the agricultural sector in the long run. Moreover, we confirm the Kuznets curve hypothesis, in which the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth in the agricultural sector shows an inverted U-shape. This means that energy consumption increases at the initial stage of economic development in the agricultural sector but eventually decreases at a later stage. Finally, we confirmed that the expansion of arable land leads to an increase in energy consumption in the short run, whereas the relationship is reversed in the long run. This may have resulted from a decreasing trend in the arable land size used for Korean agricultural production. Our findings will help policymakers develop educational programs for farmers to enhance their productivity and use energy sources efficiently.