South Korea today is predominantly urban, and rural concerns therefore rarely impact on domestic politics. However, South Korean farmers are now suffering a two-sided problem. Unusually heavy and late snow is ruining winter crops, while livestock have been devastated by two separate outbreaks of disease, neither of which seems yet to have run its course. Foot and mouth disease broke out in November 2010, while an outbreak of the virulent H5N1 strain of avian influenza (bird flu) followed in December. The latter has so far seen 5.5m poultry and ducks culled, while the toll from foot and mouth disease has reached around 3.5m animals (including cows, goats, pigs and deer). Pigs have been bulldozed into hastily dug trenches and buried alive because the time and/or drugs to slaughter them more humanely have been lacking. Questions are being asked about not only the authorities' competence and preparedness to deal with this dilemma, but also the prevalence of factory farming methods, considered cruel at the best of times, that are widely blamed for causing such outbreaks and for making them harder to contain. Meanwhile, the effects of the outbreaks are already being felt in the form of shortages of some foods and rising consumer price inflation. Agricultural exports, which in 2010 stood at around US$6bn, may fall as low as US$3bn in 2011, according to some estimates-the risk that local animals may be contaminated by foot and mouth disease is a particular worry for South Korean meat exporters.