A total length of fences installed to prevent crop damages by wild birds and animals reached to 59 thousand kilometers in fiscal 2015, that is long enough to wrap around the earth almost 1.5 times (estimated circumference of the earth about 40 thousand km), the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) said in its latest report.
In a number of mountainous regions in Japan, fences are installed not only around farm lands, but also at boundaries between mountain forests and villages for the purpose of preventing wild animals from entering agricultural fields.
MAFF has been counting a total length of the fences installed against wild animals with MAFF’s subsidy named “subsidies for comprehensive measures preventing wild animals from damaging farm products” since fiscal 2008.
Installation of “invasion-preventing fences” has been accelerated since fiscal 2011 when MAFF began to provide its subsidy to farmers fixing the fences by themselves in rural communities.
When these farmers consign works of installing fences to companies, MAFF provides the farmers only with a subsidy meeting 50 percent of the cost.
Meanwhile, a hundred percent of the fence installation cost is met by MAFF if the fence is installed by the farmer, which subsidy system became incentives for rural residents to put up fences against wild animals.
The total length of fences fixed by farmers themselves reached 50 thousand km, occupying some 80 percent of the national total.