Japan's hip young farmers dig in to avert food crunch

Young Japanese are fleeing the urban jungle for the half-abandoned
countryside on a mission to make farming cool again and cut Japan's
frightening food deficit in the process. Organic farming converts,
rice-growing Tokyo fashionistas and other young greenfingers have
trickled back into rural Japan where many farm towns have been slowly
dying amid fast-greying Japan's demographic crunch. Japan, the world's
second-largest economy, now imports 60 percent of its food, and many
worry about future food security if climate change rocks global food
supplies or energy costs swing international grain prices. In a
high-tech country that grew rich on selling cars and electronics, the
young farmers are standing up to reinvent the image of agriculture.
"No matter how big Japan's economy is, no matter how much cash it
stacks up, this country will soon be unable to buy so much food from
overseas," Yusuke Miyaji, 31 , recently told a crowd of young
farmers. "I want to make a job in the primary sector cool, striking
and profitable," said Miyaji, dressed in overalls, to applause from
his audience. "Kids should dream of becoming farmers, not baseball
players!" Miyaji, who comes from a pig farming family, has created a
network called Kosegare, a word meaning farmer's son, that has
attracted more than 200 young farmers and supporters who share his
sense of crisis. "The time left for us to revamp this industry is
probably about five years," Miyaji warned his squad of youthful
activist farmers. Under his scheme, produce is marketed under the
network's "Refarm" brand. Members share information on organic
farming and urge supportive consumers to buy directly from them to
cut distribution and commission costs. Encouraged by the movement,
Kaori Nukui, 31 , who joined her parents last year to grow green tea
and shiitake mushrooms, said that after years in the city she now saw
a business opportunity in family farming. "I had no interest before
in taking over this business," said Nukui, who had worked for Tokyo
consulting and public relations firms for seven years, as she drove a
pick-up truck to a mushroom house in Iruma, north of Tokyo. "My
mother also wanted me to marry a businessman rather than work the
land," she said. "But when I thought of starting a business myself,
I realised my parents had already built a good foundation for me."
Data shows Japan's farming population is quickly ageing and that many
farm households have no working heir, as birth rates have fallen and
children have left country towns for the bright city lights. More
than 70 percent of Japan's working farmers are aged 60 or older,
and nearly half are over 70. Only 8.5 percent are aged 39 or
younger. About 3 ,800 square kilometres (1 ,520 square miles) of
farmland have been abandoned and laid waste throughout the nation. In
88 percent of cases, the owners said they were too old to work the
fields. Japan, which kept its food self-sufficiency ratio above 70
percent in the late 1960 s, now produces only 40 percent of its food
and buys almost all its wheat, corn and soy beans from overseas.
Domestic production of meat, particularly beef and pork, has fallen
from 96 percent in 1960 to about half in 2007. The country grows
enough rice for domestic consumption, thanks to heavy trade
protection which has also made the rice sector highly inefficient.
The government has for years tried to reduce rice farming acreage in
order to limit supply, keep the market price high, and thereby allow
Japanese rice farmers to continue to make a living. The new
government led by Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has pledged to
abolish the policy but keep subsidising rice farmers. Seeing the dire
situation of farmers, even girls with trendy hairstyles and long
painted fingernails in Tokyo's fashionable Shibuya shopping district
have jumped onto the rural bandwagon. Shiho Fujita, a 24- year-old
singer, music producer and model, is leading a squad of "gal"
farmers who have cultivated rice in the countryside, and dishes out
advice in her blog on growing zucchini and tomatoes. "It may be
difficult for gals and young people to start farming instantly," she
writes. "But if the agro-industry becomes more exciting by young
people joining it, then Japan's farming will definitely change.