Opting for farming in rural areas keeps growing in Japan

TOKYO, May 25 — More Japanese people have opted for the benefits of a rural life over the hustle of big city life, a study has shown.

Japanese workers who contracted over a 7-month period in the farming sector more than tripled from 66,000 in 2010 to 220,000 in 2015, according to economists who analyzed data on the country’s agriculture census.

That is good news after years of young people heading for the cities the average farmer in Japan is now over 65 years old and that figure is rising steadily.

At the same time, foreign workers in the farming secgtor, mainly those who entered Japan on technical trainee visas, reached 21,000 in 2015, accounting for 9.5 percent of the country’s total agricultural workforce.

Japan started accepting unskilled foreign workers from developing countries as trainees in sectors such as agriculture, food processing and nursing care for a certain period.

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