Shigenobu Fukumoto was born into a farming family close to Lake Biwa in Shiga Prefecture. Growing up in the early 1970s surrounded by fields of rice, carrots, cabbage and green onions, Fukumoto and his family were representative of Japan's 5.5 million farming households.
As Fukumoto, 49, recounts while walking through a field of naganegi — a type of green onion — his parents were "small quantity, large variety" farmers, and in every sense typical. Fast forward nearly 50 years and the picture is radically different.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF), in 2015 there were about 1.33 million households engaged in commercial farming, with the total number of farmers down from more than 11 million in 1965 to fewer than 2 million presently. Moreover, farming is increasingly an occupation dominated by the elderly: 6 in 10 farmers in Japan are over the age of 65, and farming as a full-time profession is increasingly becoming a thing of the past.
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