Ageing farmers behind developed world rural crisis

Updated August 26, 2010 09:22:06

It is an idea that has attracted global interest - a robotic suit that helps elderly Japanese farmers - but it is one that has also highlighted the problems of an ageing rural population.

The exoskeleten can be strapped-on to farm workers and helps reduce the strain of more physically demanding tasks.

Most of Japan's farmers are over the age of 60 and many people fear it is a profession that is completely dying out.

Presenter: Helene Hofman
Speaker: Takeo Ogawa, professor at Kumamoto Gakuen University and trustee of the Asian Aging Business Center; Masayoshi Honma, professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Tokyo; Mika Iba, Network for a Safe and Secure Food Environment

HOFMAN: Tilling, planting, harvesting, threshing and cleaning - farming is physically demanding. However in Japan it is a profession left mostly to the aging. Of the country's 3 million farmers, between 60 and 70 per cent are over the age of 60 and that's a major problem.

Takeo Ogawa is a professor at Kumamoto Gakuen University and a trustee of the Asian Aging Business Centre.

OGAWA: In Japan, many of the younger people don't like to stay in rural areas and they wish to get a good job in urban areas and only older persons is demanding farming, and how to maintain these villages and agriculture, it's a very severe problem in Japan, and maybe in Japanese mountainous areas, many villages will disappear in the near future.

HOFMAN: One of the main issues is that rice farming in Japan is no longer profitable. Land ownership laws dating back to the second world war have left the agricultural economy dependent on mostly, small and inefficient family owned ventures. In Australia, even small farms average out at about 9.6 hectares. In Japan, the average commercial farm is about 1.8 hectares. And while fruit and vegetable farmers are cashing in on high demand both at home and abroad - rice farmers are struggling with a decade of price falls.

Masayoshi Honma, a professor of agricultural and resource economics at the University of Tokyo, says only a complete overhaul of the system can turn things around.

HONMA: We need some structural reform. So, that means, it's not necessary to maintain the number of farmers. So, less numbers, but very qualified, young farmers. That's what we need.

HOFMAN: But it's not all bad news. Last week, Japan's ministry of agriculture, forestry and fisheries showed the number of new farmers increased by over 11 per cent between 2008 and 2009. While over half of those new farmers were over the age of 60, the number of people who took over farms from aging relatives went up 15 per cent.

Mika Iba from the Network for a Safe and Secure Food Environment says that's mostly thanks to the fruit and vegetable sector, with the situation for rice farmers increasingly grim.

IBA: We have big cities like Tokyo, Osaka, all these big metropolitan areas. Around that metropolitan areas we do have much younger population of farmers because we do have consumers closer to them and there is enough need and demand for fresh vegetables and fruit and there is an interesting phenomenon that more, younger generation, like in their 20s, are becoming more and more interesting in their farming. Like some girls have their own farms, growing vegetables and rice, so we will see where this trend will go now.