In continuing with my self-directed research on agricultural labor in Japan, I have been building the habit of completing 1 literature review per day on recent publications that relate to youth in agriculture in Japan. After my previous statistical analysis on ArcGIS, I chose to focus on Hokkaido.
Hokkaido is a large prefecture in Japan that is widely regarded as one of the most important agricultural producing regions in the country. At the time Strained agricultural farming under the stress of
youths’ career selection tendencies: a case study
from Hokkaido (Japan) was published, Hokkaido had a food self sufficiency rate of 200%. In this study Usman et Al. highlighted many key characteristics that make Hokkaido the “food basket of Japan”.
Farm management area in the prefecture is on average 14 times larger than in other prefectures. Most family farms in Japan are based on small lot sizes, meaning on most farms large machines are not used like they are in Canada and the US. I experienced this during my day volunteering, as we did all work by hand. Hokkaido may present an interesting opportunity for increased industrialized farming, mirroring what we have today in the west. This is certainly a topic I would like to explore in the future.
Usman et Al. noted that the general trend of city adjacent farms was to produce vegetables rather than grains, due to the quicker and more bountiful harvest as well as the proximity to local markets, but as farm workers aged they would switch to grains as they were less labor intensive and easier to handle without young workers.
The majority of the paper’s findings indicated that the issues Japan currently faces could be alleviated with changes to current education systems as well as public outlook towards education and agriculture. The paper cited common urbanization trends that each country goes through after industrialization. Mainly, the interest of young people to attend university and get high paying office jobs. The paper also cited lack of a comprehensive career guidance program in Japanese high schools as another hurdle.
This matches the situation in Canada heavily, where parents’ and students’ educational market analysis lags slightly behind the actual situation in the job market. Many students want to go to school for computer science, engineering, and finances, without realizing that these markets are quite saturated. I would like to look at more comparisons between the job market competition in Canada, specifically Ontario, and Japan. Canada has been able to overcome some of these challenges recently and I wonder if Japan can employ similar strategies.
A final point the article touched on was Japan’s current strategy to overcome its dwindling workforce, immigration. I will have to look more into whether Japan is using immigration for agriculture or not, but I can say from personal experience that there are many immigrants living in Japan right now. The article mentions that the rate of immigration may not be enough to support the workforce in a meaningful way, and that it may also cause social, political, and economic tension. I can speak to this point, as during my time in Tokyo I encountered many political displays with loud megaphones speaking of rhetoric that we often hear these days in the west. A lot of the displays would say things about Japan belonging to Japanese. Japan has a very different culture when compared to ours, and it is not surprising that immigration is not favored among many Japanese people. The article mentioned that due to the strict social customs and the difficulty immigrants have in following them, a large number of immigration job opportunities end in termination. The article suggested finding ways to encourage the indigenous population of Japan to turn to agriculture.
Overall this paper was insightful. I can already see multiple paths to further explore. I hope you enjoyed this update.
Jaron Wiigs 