TOKYO, Jan. 22 ― Japan’s farmland area has declined for the fourth consecutive year, as fields have been abandoned and are no longer cultivated, according to a survey conducted by the agriculture ministry.
The farmland increased to 4.06 million hectares in 2013, but it has now gone down to 4.02 million hectares in 2017, with a 10,000 hectare decline a year before.
It is partly because farmers get older and young generations aren’t much interested in getting into low-paying farming business in Japan.
The Japanese government has set a target to improve self-sufficiency ratio to 40 percent as well as to boost farmland area of 4.4 million hectares by 2025.
It appears that the government’s agricultural policies are extremely inefficient.