Is farming destined to die out eventually?

The Japanese countryside is dotted with picturesque rice paddies and farmland. But in many rural communities, agrarian work is threatened because so many farming households comprise elderly people. Some 380,000 hectares of farmland now lie fallow. This represents about 10 percent of all farmland nationwide. To raise the nation's food self-sufficiency rate, and to help preserve the natural environment, this trend must be halted.

The Japanese government is seeking to stem the tide of abandoned farmland through various measures; by lending farm plots, borrowing tracts from landowners and buying and selling land, for example. The problem is that these efforts largely target people already active in farming, and fail to deal with the true scope of the problem.

Unless there is an influx of outsiders eager to experience this lifestyle, farming operations will simply die eventually. This is being borne out by the extremely low number of children and grandchildren willing to carry on family farming traditions.