An Agriculture Ministry report says 2.09 million people work in agriculture and forestry in Japan, a drop of nearly 20 percent in five years, said Kyodo news service. “The ministry attributed the drop to many people quitting the farming and forestry business as they grow older. The average age of those in the sector was 66.3 years, up six months from five years ago.” The workforce has shrunk 60 percent since 1985, when the government began an annual census of the sector. Kyodo said the fall-off “potentially threatens the landscape as its stewards leave the sector and are not replaced.”
Kyodo said there were 1.77 million people engaged in agriculture this year, down nearly 14 percent in five years. “The combined total of farming households and agricultural corporations declined 18.1 percent to 1.38 million,” it said. The average area of cultivation was 2.5 hectares (6.2 acres), an increase of 0.3 hectare from 2010. “The area of farmland left fallow for over a year and expected to remain so for several years totaled 424,000 hectares, up 7.1 percent from five years ago, the largest since it was included in the survey in 1975,” said Kyodo.