‘Smart Apple Orchards’ Take On the Climate Crisis... Cheongsong Set to Transform Fruit Farming

Investing 7 Billion Won

Building Disaster-Resistant Smart Greenhouses for 20 Farms

Combining Unmanned Pest Control, Automated Irrigation, and Multi-Leader Cultivation

Kicking Off Innovation in Cheongsong Apple Production

Cheongsong County in North Gyeongsang Province is accelerating its transition to a smart agriculture system in apple farming, the region’s representative industry, to address climate change and rural aging.

The county’s plan goes beyond simply supplying automated equipment to farms. By integrating disaster-resistant facilities, unmanned pest control, automatic irrigation, new cultivation methods, and agricultural data, Cheongsong aims to establish a future-oriented apple production model tailored to the local natural environment.

Cheongsong County Office
Photo by Byeonggeon Kwon

According to Cheongsong County officials on August 20, the county is expanding the foundation for smart apple farms this year, focusing on the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs’ “Disaster-Response Fruit Cultivation Facility Support Pilot Project.”

This project selected 20 farms in the Cheongsong area, with a total project budget of 7 billion won. Rather than concentrating the project in a specific area, the smart cultivation facilities are distributed across eight towns and townships within Cheongsong County, allowing the effectiveness and adaptability in each region to be assessed.

The core objective is to overcome the limitations of conventional open-field cultivation, where apple orchards are directly exposed to external weather conditions.

The project will introduce disaster-resistant greenhouses, featuring fully retractable side and roof windows, as well as unmanned air-fog pest control systems, environmental control systems, and automatic irrigation facilities to the participating farms.

In addition, the project is incorporating climate-adaptive domestic apple varieties such as Golden Ball, ultra-high density multi-leader cultivation techniques, and disaster prevention equipment like hot air blowers, with the goal of simultaneously improving production stability and operational efficiency.

The driving force behind Cheongsong's rapid push for smart farm conversion is the increasingly severe impact of climate change.

With abnormal weather events such as spring cold spells and frost, as well as summertime heavy rains and heat waves occurring repeatedly, fruit farming based predominantly on open fields is exposed to yearly risks of fluctuating yields and quality.

Rural population aging and labor shortages are also critical challenges to be addressed. Notably, apple farming requires significant manual labor not only for thinning and harvesting but also for pest control, which further underscores the need to reduce labor through automation and unmanned technologies.

In fact, Cheongsong County has initiated on-site validation by conducting live trials of unmanned pest control equipment at the Apple Smart Greenhouse site in Geoseong-ri, Hyeondong-myeon, with project farmers and stakeholders in attendance.

The demonstration involved rail-type unmanned sprayers as well as speed sprayers (SS machines) capable of autonomous driving and remote control. Farmers directly checked how the equipment operated, its pest control performance, and working efficiency.

Cheongsong County plans to connect the adoption of smart greenhouses and advanced agricultural machinery to a broader structural innovation of the apple industry. In Gaeeil-ri, Hyeondong-myeon, 3 billion won is being invested to develop a specialized smart orchard complex, and 2.2 billion won will be used to support saplings for establishing planar orchards.

At the Cheongsong Golden Apple Research Complex, a further 500 million won is being invested to establish standard cultivation technologies for various planting forms, such as high density, two-leader, and multi-leader systems, and to strengthen a scientific farming system based on agricultural data.

The county also expects that, by leveraging data on air temperature, humidity, soil moisture, and growth environments accumulated through smart farms, fruit farming, which has traditionally depended heavily on the experience of individual growers, can be transformed into more precise data-driven agriculture.

Cheongsong County is also putting significant effort into enhancing farmers’ ability to adapt to the new smart agriculture system on the ground.

The Cheongsong County Agricultural Technology Center has formed the "Cheongsong Apple Smart Farm Greenhouse Cultivators’ Research Association" to provide training in cultivation techniques and on-site consulting. For participating farmers, the center also arranges field trips to advanced regions and education on smart pest control systems.

The transition to smart agriculture aligns with Cheongsong County’s agricultural policy for the year: “Future Agriculture, Prosperous Cheongsong.”

This year, Cheongsong County is allocating a budget of 117.6 billion won to agriculture, facilitating smart and advanced apple production infrastructure, strengthening disaster response capabilities, stabilizing farmers' income, and expanding competitiveness in distribution, processing, and exports.

The local agricultural sector believes that if Cheongsong’s smart farm project succeeds, it will signify much more than just the expansion of facility-based agriculture.

If disaster response technologies, automation, and data-driven agriculture are combined with the nationally recognized Cheongsong Apple brand, it will be possible to reduce yield and quality variability while at the same time creating a new fruit industry model that addresses aging and labor shortages in rural areas.

In particular, if this project spreads beyond the pilot stage across the wider region, some analysts say it could become a turning point that shifts the competitiveness of the apple industry from being brand-focused to being driven by production technology and system innovation.

Yoon Kyung-hee, the governor of Cheongsong County, is being interviewed by a reporter from The Asia Business Daily.
[Photo by Kwon Byunggeon]

Yoon Kyung-hee, Governor of Cheongsong County, has stated that he will continue to expand the foundation for smart agriculture, countering climate change and rural labor shortages and establishing a future-oriented apple cultivation model suitable for the Cheongsong region.

The significance of Cheongsong’s smart farm experiment is not just in “how to produce more apples.” It is a meaningful effort to find a solution for stable apple production amid the structural challenges of climate change and rural aging.

On the ground, the transition is underway from open-field orchards to smart greenhouses, from manual pest control to unmanned and autonomous equipment, and from experience-based cultivation to precision agriculture utilizing data.

As a leading apple-producing region in Korea, Cheongsong’s ability to evolve from a district known for producing good apples to a district that sets the standard for future apple agriculture will determine the success of the smart farm project.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.