Structural Problems of Agriculture and Rural Policy in Japan

概要

In Japan’s agricultural policy since World War II, traditional rural society was regarded as negative beings from the perspective of agricultural modernization in the 1960s. But policy attitudes toward rural society have changed, and there was a growing tendency to use rural communities to adjust rice production and mobilize farmland tenancy from the latter half of the 1970s. Rural policy began to be implemented in earnest after the 1990s, especially in the 2000s, and behind that there were concerns that the decline in rural society would lead to the collapse of agriculture. The main reason for the decline of rural society is the depopulation and aging. However, the rural policy of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) was limited to conservation efforts with respect to agricultural resources. Since 2020, the rural policy has been revised with the aim of promoting rural revitalization. The MAFF has announced that it will promote the integration of rural policies. A new rural policy affects the whole policy framework that the MAFF has carried out agricultural structural reform, but adjustment between policies is expected to be difficult.