The Central Union of Agricultural Cooperatives (JA Zenchu) has announced a reform plan aimed at making Japan's farming sector more competitive. But a government panel on deregulation has dismissed the plan as inadequate. Zenchu should come up with a more drastic, effective plan that would contribute to revitalizing the nation's agriculture business and farmland communities.
Japan's farming population is shrinking and graying. According to the agriculture ministry, the average age of 1.74 million active farmers who engage in agriculture as their primary work reached 66.5 in 2013. The total area of abandoned agricultural fields amounted to 400,000 hectares — equivalent to the area of all of Shiga Prefecture — in 2010. These figures underline the urgency of reform efforts.
Although there are farmers who have management awareness and are making efforts to reduce production costs by increasing the scale of their operations, their voices are not fully reflected in decisions by agricultural cooperatives. This is because farmers who rely on other jobs for their main source of income as well as people who engage in farming as a side job make up a majority among full members of the cooperatives.