How to rent farm machinery instead of buying it

When you farm, you can't do without farm machinery. Fortunately, there's a government program that rents it out — in Jeju, searching "제주 농기계임대" (Jeju farm machinery rental) brought up the site run by the agricultural technology center.

Two requirements to rent

To apply for a machinery rental, you had to meet two requirements: have completed farm machinery training or hold a tractor or excavator license, and be enrolled in farmers' safety insurance. Machinery training was held twice a year, in May and October.

Applying and what to bring

You could rent for 1–3 days at a time. You logged in online, marked the dates, machine, type of work and amount of work, and paid on the day of rental. Applying by phone or in person was also possible. After applying, you had to bring your ID and a printed "farmers' safety insurance enrollment certificate" (the enrollment certificate, not a payment receipt).

Pickup and return

You could pick it up at 9 a.m. on the day, but if you wanted to start work at dawn, it was better to collect it the evening before between 4:30 and 5:30. It had to be returned by 5:30 on the last day of use, after washing it once.

What we gained by renting

The real benefit was being able to use machinery for just a day's fee without buying it.

Looking back now — renting machinery instead of buying it was the first example of our way of running things with costs kept as low as possible.