Chungcheongnam-do

The Agriculture Venture Expo (AVEX), which was held to offer new possibilities to Korean agriculture and to give hope to the farmers, rang down its curtain successfully. Let us take a look at the Agriculture Venture Expo, which took place at the 210,000 pyeong large field of the Chungnam Agriculture Research & Extension Services from April 28 to May 7.

Co-hosted by Chungnam and the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation, more than 300,000 people from and outside the country visited AVEX 2006. This number was way above expectations, due to the fact that AVEX proposed a sure alternative to future agriculture and prepared a wide variety of attractive contents.
The exhibition was held in the main and auxiliary halls, outdoor exhibition hall. Also, official events, contest and special exhibitions, academic event, and experiential event were carried out during the whole event.
The main exhibition hall was divided into 5 sub-halls giving the consumers a clear understanding of the competitiveness and various roles of agriculture, which were the AVEX hall, green agriculture hall, hi-tech development hall, promising agriculture hall and environmental-friendly agriculture hall.


Agriculture Venture Overcomes the Agricultural Crisis
The AVEX displayed pictures and videos of the people who played a critical role in the development of Korean agriculture as well as their contributions. The green agriculture hall brought up the need for venture agriculture by showing functional rice, strawberry pepper paste and ginseng chocolate. The hi-tech development hall displayed regional specialized crops, the achievements and new technologies from agricultural research bodies, and exotic plants. Venture agricultural produces representing each province were shown in the promising agriculture hall. In the environmental-friendly agriculture hall, we could see the need for environmental-friendly agriculture and real specimens.
The auxiliary exhibition hall ran the family zoo experience ground, bonsai exhibition hall, company publicity hall and specialized farm produce exhibition/sales hall.
At the outdoor exhibition hall, all sorts and kinds of flowers were shown in the wild flower garden, rose garden, barley field, rape blossoms garden, tunnel of plants, fragrance forest, water plant garden and apple garden presenting a spectacular sight to the visitors.
The official event provided lots of entertainment with the opening/closing ceremony, agriculture venture fair, and city/county day. The experiential event was a chance for visitors from city to understand the importance of agriculture through traditional folk culture, farm produce performance day, animal farm and farming experience.

Potatoes on the Roots and Tomatoes on the Stems
The AVEX caught the attention of the visitors with many unique items.
Usually seen in the fall, cosmos flowers and sunflowers in full bloom made people confused of the season, and the apples and pears, also out-of-season, surprised the visitors. This was possible thanks to advanced cultivation techniques. It was a art of adjusting the blooming time for this exhibition. The ‘Togam’ with potatoes on the roots and tomatoes on the stems, ‘Moochoo’ with a radish on the base and a cabbage on the upper, and ‘Rainbow Watermelon’ having a regular watermelon pattern on the lower part and yellow-colored upper part were loved especially by children. Also, 500 to 600 peppers and eggplants were ripening on ‘eggplant trees’ and ‘pepper trees’ of a children’s height.
The AVEX 2006 showed the hope and future of the people in the venture agriculture saying ‘Farming is not done by the gods, but with shining ideas and passion.’ It was also a great chance to see the present state and unlimited possibilities of the high value added venture agriculture.