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The impoverished country’s total grain output for this year is estimated at 4.31 million metric tons, up 7.5 percent from 2007 when it produced 4.01 million metric tons, according to the South’s state-run farm agency on Thursday.
Its harvest of rice, the country’s main staple food, gained by 21.6 percent to 1.9 million tons, while corn production dropped by 20 percent to 1.5 million tons, the Rural Development Administration said in a statement.
North Korea also produced 160,000 tons of soy beans, 510,000 tons of potatoes and 240,000 tons of barley and other grains.
The agricultural agency attributed the increased crop output to favorable weather conditions. "There were no major typhoons in the North this year," the statement said. In past years, the North had suffered from natural disasters, such as drought and floods, which had wiped out crops and farmland.
But the agency said that this year's food output still falls far short of the North's annual food quota of at least 5.2 million tons.
The study comes after a U.N. agency estimated North Korea's grain production at 4.21 million tons last week, up by over 3 million tons from last year. But this still leaves the country facing a grain deficit of 836,000 tons, even with commercial imports, according to the World Food Program.
The agency warned that about 40 percent of the North's 23 million people will urgently need food aid over the next several months, calling for more international food aid.
The Food and Agricultural organization also said that the prospects of the North’s food output for next year are bleak "with a substantial deficit of basic foods that will only partly be covered by commercial imports and anticipated food aid."
North Korea has depended upon international handouts to help feed its population since the late 1990s, when it was hit by the famine that led to an estimated death toll of more than 2 million people, or 10% of its total population.
The latest U.S. shipment of food aid will arrive in North Korea this month after a four-month lapse, the Voice of America said Thursday, quoting a Washington official. Washington has pledged 500,000 tons of food aid to Pyongyang this year.
Pyongyang has placed as its top priority the resolution of the chronic food shortages that have forced more and more North Koreans to cross the border into China in search of food.
The North's media has described solving the food crisis as a "politically grave task" that can resolve its other national problems, calling for an all-out national effort to boost grain output.
The food problem is the No. 1 priority for protecting the country's political system based on "our own style of socialism," the North's state-run Korean Central Broadcasting Station said in a recent report. "As we have unity in our hearts and strong military power, we have nothing to fear as long as we solve the food problem," it said.
Some analysts in Seoul have said that the improving food conditions have led North Korea to toughen its stance toward South Korea, its archrival, but main aid donor.
The South has provided aid in the form of 400,000 to 500,000 tons of rice to the North every year for the past decade, in addition to 300,000 tons of fertilizer annually.
But the new conservative government that took office in February did not donate any food aid to the North, blasting its drive for nuclear weapons instead. Seoul's civic officials called for the strict monitoring of aid distribution, saying that the North has cut rations to farmers to boost food stockpiles for the country's military.
The Seoul government said it was still willing to provide food and fertilizer aid only if the North makes an official request. But the North has yet to make such a request.
"Largely due to improving food conditions, North Korea has stepped up its hard-line stance against the South," said Cho Sung-yurl, a researcher at the Institute for National Security Strategy.
The North has cut off ties with Seoul and imposed strict crackdowns on border traffic, jeopardizing inter-Korean industrial and tourism projects. The North's military has also threatened to turn everything in the South into "debris" and "ashes" if the South continues with what the North calls "confrontational" activities.
