North Gyeongsang Province said on the 13th that it secured 16.2 billion won this year in budget for a public contest project by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs to modernize agricultural product processing and distribution centers (APC) with smart technology. That accounts for 44% of the total budget.
An APC is a complex facility responsible for commercialization such as sorting and packaging of agricultural products, and logistics such as collection, storage, and shipment. It plays a pivotal role in origin distribution within a supply system that connects origin, wholesale, and retail.
The core of the province's APC smartization is AI (artificial intelligence). Through AI sorters, large volumes of agricultural products are processed quickly under consistent standards. The device analyzes video and sensor data to automatically determine quality, size, and color, and classifies products by grade. In particular, the AI camera can precisely detect micro-defects that are difficult to see with the naked eye.
The province is promoting smartization for 16 smart APCs. Aiming for a "great transition to a stable, digital-based smart agricultural product distribution structure," it invested 38.3 billion won from 2023 to last year. The province said this is reducing labor costs as well as distribution expenses, improving marketability, and raising producer take-home prices. According to research by the NongHyup Future Strategy Research Institute, after the introduction of AI sorters in 2023 at origin distribution centers handling peaches in the province, the average sales unit price rose 20%.
The province plans to expand AI adoption to a total of 133 APCs in the province. The province has 98 APCs run by NongHyup and 35 by agricultural corporations. The total handling amount of these APCs is 1.6927 trillion won, accounting for 28% of the nationwide APC handling amount.
Park Chan-guk, head of the Agriculture, Livestock and Distribution Bureau of North Gyeongsang Province, said, "The distribution of agricultural products has entered the AI era," and added, "We will spare no policy support to use AI technology to bridge the physical barrier between farmers and consumers amid the expansion of contactless transactions, and to create a new transformation in origin distribution."