Woman’s participation in agriculture in Japan.

How to effect for future?

2171227 Mayu Hayakawa
1 Introduction
Agriculture create food, fabric, oil and material from nature things that mean is it is a
necessary for human life. Agriculture is dominated by a mainly men strong society. For
long time woman only focus on housework and raising their own child in Japan.
Although agriculture is an essential sector for whole world, Japanese agriculture is
slowly declining. On the other hand, females are starting new projects for the revival
Japanese agriculture in the male dominated society. This report will be discus the
participation to agriculture of females and how they are beneficial for the future of the
industry in Japan.

Japan has a problem with the ability to be a self-sufficient country. There is a

very limited amount of new workers entering the agriculture industry and a even smaller
amount of woman entering. In 1965, Japanese food self-sufficiency rate was 73 percent,
but it started to decline from the 1990’s until now where it is at 37 percent in 2016.
(reference) Females are contributing towards Japanese aging agricultural society by
entering into the industry as new workers. This movement can also be related to the
future of farms through marriage and making successors for next generation of farmers.
The new female workers bring with them not only fresh hands but also new ideas and
new ways of going about doing work (REFERENCE).

2 Discussion

2.1 Benefit of female participation in agriculture.

As the agriculture industry within in Japan is struggling to maintain the work
force as more and more people are opting to leave the country side and more into cities.
The Japanese agriculture industry is a heavily male dominated society thus more
woman entering the industry will give a boost to the number of new workers entering
the industry. In 1965 there were 11 million farming families where as in 2015 there
were an estimated 1.33 million households involved in the Agriculture industry. With 6
out of 10 farmers being over the age of 65 (O'Donoghue, 2018). Encouraging more
female workers will add more much needed workers to the industry espicaly in the
bovine. In the horticulture industry within Japan has always maintained by a mostly
female dominated work force with farms such as the Yamagata Girls farm which is a
farm run completely by young females between the ages of 21 to 32. The Yamagata
Girls farm grows produce such as watermelon, spinach, taro and rice which from which
they make baked foods and other meals that they sell. All the workers hold agricultural
degrees as they believe that having a degree on top of experience will produce the best
produce for sell within Japan (Demetriou, 2014). This idea of girl only farming has
started a rise in younger woman starting up their own girls farms in the areas that they
live in. They are doing this as the government is supporting start up farmers to try and
combat the lack of farms within Japan (Watanabe, 2016).

2.2 problems females find within participation in agriculture

Although woman represent 43% of the worlds agricultural work force many
of them find it hard to make a mark within the industry. Woman produce up to 80% of
the crops grown but only own about 1% of the land. Most of this land is also the less
fertile land that the men did not want to use. Woman also find it harder to gain funding
from governments than men do. Woman also find less market opportunities and are
often confined to local markets where produce does not sell for as high a price than in
more of an urban market (Standard Bank, 2014). Within Japan woman farmers are often
viewed as only wives to the farmers even though they have always outnumbered their
male coworkers. Within the Japanese Agricultural Cooperatives association only 998 of
the 18,910 members are woman which only adds up to 5.3%. This idea, however, is a
typical view throughout Japan (Iijima, 2015).

3.1 conclusion

from this research it has been seen that over the resent years there has been an
improvement in the role of woman within the agriculture industry in Japan. However,
there is still a long way to go before the problem has been fixed. With the declining
interest in the agricultural industry within Japan the industry will have to hire and
support more female workers to fill in the lack of workers within the industry. There is
also a lot of underlying issues regarding sexism within Japan as a whole and without a
change in the cultural views of Japan this will not change anytime soon.

References

Demetriou, D. (2014, March 21). Women Change the Face of Japanese Farming.
Retrieved November 3, 2018, from
https://web.archive.org/web/20140724051619/http://modernfarmer.com/2014/
03/yamagata-girls-farm/
Iijima, M. (2015). Japanese Woman in Agriculture. GAIN Report. Retrieved January 26,
2015, from https://gain.fas.usda.gov/Recent GAIN Publications/Japanese
Women in Agriculture - Overview_Tokyo_Japan_2-26-2015.pdf.

O'Donoghue, J. J. (2018, June 23). Is farming in Japan on its last legs? Retrieved
November 3, 2018, from
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2018/06/23/food/farming-japan-last-
legs/#.W9zhXRMzaEI

Standard Bank, [blog]. (2014, August 31). 6 Challenges facing women in farming.
Retrieved November 3, 2018, from
https://bizconnect.standardbank.co.za/sector-news/agriculturearticles/6-
challenges-facing-women-in-farming.aspx

Watanabe, S. (2016, January 12). Hokkaido women prove you don't need to marry a
farmer to become one. Retrieved November 3, 2018, from
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/01/12/national/hokkaido-women-
prove-you-dont-need-to-marry-a-farmer-to-become-one/#.W9z-iXozaEI