Kuzumaki, a dairy farming region in the heart of Iwate Prefecture which has been tackling for more than a decade to facilitate the use of uncultivated farmland, was officially commended for managing to reduce the rate of such land to 1% of total farmlands in fiscal 2011.
A region with an average altitude of 390 meters, Kuzumaki has 3,830 hectares of farmland, out of which 84% is used as fields to grow feed grains. Concerned with the situation where the aging of farmers and lack of successors led to increasing amount of farmlands standing idle, the agriculture committee of the local government began taking measures to reduce the area of unused farmland in 1996.
They managed to halve the amount of unused farmland to 46 hectares in fiscal 2011, compared with 1997 when such land topped 100 hectares, and recently received the Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Prize from the National Chamber of Agriculture for their efforts.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, the amount of unused farmlands reached 396,000 hectares nationwide in fiscal 2010, occupying 10.6% of total farmlands.
The committee first hired a staff specifying in facilitation of farmland use. The staff mediated farmland transactions between landowners and borrowers and encouraged the use of land as fields to grow feed grains, flowers for tourist attraction or as allotment gardens.
Tsutomu Suzuki, head of Kuzumaki agriculture committee, (right) and Kazunori Fukasawaguchi, head of the committee’s secretariat, chat in front of a signboard calling on those wanting to lend or borrow farmlands to consult the committee.
Starting in 2003, 13 members of the committee went around the region from time to time to check uncultivated farmlands and created a map which indicates the situations of farmlands in different colors. They cultivated unused farmland themselves and made it into a buckwheat field to be used for tourist attraction or farm field trips for children in the region. They also provided agricultural cooperatives and other organizations in the region with information on unused farmlands to facilitate their usage.
In September 2008, the committee relaxed the minimum lot size for obtaining farmland to 10 ares or more from 50 ares or more, and 6 people newly entered farming in the following 4 years as a result.
Tsutomu Suzuki, a 59-year-old dairy farmer and the head of the committee, stressed the significance of coping with the problem of unused farmlands as a region, adding that the efficient use of farmlands is inevitable also with respect to raising self-sufficiency of feed, amid rising prices of feed grains. Kazunori Fukasawaguchi, head of the committee’s secretariat, said it is important to maintain the recognition that farmlands should not be deteriorated, adding that the committee is also setting up handmade signboards to encourage farmland use.
(July 19, 2013)