Considering that Japan is only 40 percent self-sufficient in terms of its food supply, few would dispute that the country's agriculture is in a deepening crisis.
Yet in these times, more and more of Japan's city-dwellers are now becoming interested in agriculture both as potential farmers themselves or through their role as consumers.
As evidence of this, one crisp mid-May morning recently, some 30 business types were to be found barefoot and braving the watery mud of a rice paddy in the town of Yokoshibahikari in Chiba Prefecture.