Is farming in Japan on his last legs?
According to the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF), in 2015 there were about 1.33 million households engaged in commercial farming, with the total number of farmers down from more than 11 million in 1965 to fewer than 2 million presently.
Moreover, farming is increasingly an occupation dominated by the elderly: 6 in 10 farmers in Japan are over the age of 65, and farming as a full-time profession is increasingly becoming a thing of the past.
However, while farming as a profession has lost out to other jobs, and as elderly farmers die and aren’t replaced, the number of farmers may not be the key issue.
How Japan tackles food self-sufficiency and maintains its landscapes, cultural heritage and vitality of its countryside villages through agriculture is of particular concern, says Jos Verstegen, a researcher at Wageningen Economic Research in the Netherlands and a visiting professor at Miyazaki Sangyo-keiei University.
“Japan has issues with all of these topics already, and with the aging of farmers it will become more serious within a decade,” Verstegen says.