Home > Statistics > Handbook > Chapter 5 Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries
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A persimmon field in Miyagi Prefecture. Basking in the mild late-autumn sun, persimmons were picked from trees laden with fruits. Japan's 2007 persimmon crop was 244,800 tons.
Over the course of Japan's economic growth, its agricultural, forestry and fishing industries employ fewer and fewer workers every year, and their GDP share has also dropped. The number of workers decreased from 14.39 million in 1960 (32.7 percent of the total workforce) to 2.97 million in 2005 (4.8 percent), and the GDP share of the industries fell from 12.8 percent in 1960 to 1.4 percent in 2005.
Japan's total agricultural output in 2007 amounted to 8.19 trillion yen, of which 2.05 trillion yen, or 25.0 percent, came from vegetables. Rice earned 1.79 trillion yen, 21.9 percent of the total.
In 2005, the number of farm households engaged in commercial farming (which refers to households with cultivated land under management of 0.3 hectares and over, or with annual sales of agricultural products amounting to 500,000 yen and over) was 1.96 million. Of these commercial farm households, 22.6 percent were full-time farm households, 15.7 percent were part-time farm households with farming income exceeding non-farming income, and 61.7 percent were part-time farm households with non-farming income exceeding farming income.
Of the commercial farm household members, 3.35 million people were actually engaged in farming (commercial farmers) in 2005, of whom 58.2 percent were aged 65 years and over.
In 2007, the total income per commercial farm household was 4.84 million yen, down 3.2 percent from the previous year. Of that amount, 1.20 million yen was from farming income, 1.94 million yen from non-farming income, and 1.70 million yen from pension benefits and other sources.
Japan's cultivated acreage shrank year after year from 6.09 million hectares in 1961 to 4.63 million hectares in 2008. In the one-year period of 2008, there were 2,010 hectares of new cultivation but also a 23,900-hectare decrease. The most common cause for the decrease was land-use conversion for residential lands or factory sites, accounting for approximately 45 percent of all cases, followed by cultivation abandonment, making up approximately 41 percent.
Japan's forest land area is 25.1 million hectares (approximately 70 percent of its entire surface area). Of this, natural forests account for 50 percent while planted forests, most of which are conifer plantations, make up 40 percent. Meanwhile, Japan's forest growing stock is 4.4 billion cubic meters, of which 2.7 billion cubic meters are from planted forests.
Forests that were planted after World War II are now finally ready for use. The functions that forests play in soil conservation and the prevention of global warming need to be exercised in a sustainable manner by smoothly following the cycle of cutting, planting and tending planted forests.
Domestic roundwood production totaled 18.6 million cubic meters in 2007, which is equivalent to only 35 percent of the peak in 1967 (52.7 million cubic meters). In 2007, Japan's self-sufficiency rate for lumber was 22.6 percent. Currently, Japan depends mostly on imported lumber for pulp, woodchip and plywood material.
The slowdown in domestic lumber production has resulted in a decline in the number of workers engaged in forestry. In 2005, there were 47,000 workers engaged in forestry, a level which represented only 70 percent of the number recorded five years before. Also, one out of four workers was aged 65 and over, highlighting the aging of the labor force.
In Japan, a country surrounded by ocean, the fishing industry has played an important role in supplying animal protein and bringing a healthy and rich diet to the population. Recently, however, there has been a progressing trend of "a shift away from fish," particularly among the younger generations. Japan's fishing industry is also undergoing major changes. Lower fishery production, due to deteriorating resources in surrounding waters, and the declining and increasingly aging fishery workforce are among the reasons for those changes.
Japan's fishery output has been on the decline since 1989. Its 2008 fishery production totaled 5.59 million tons, down 2.3 percent from the previous year. Of this, marine fishing and aquaculture production amounted to 5.52 million tons.
The number of workers in the marine fishery industry (the workers who are marine fishery or marine aquaculture household members and engage in work at sea for 30 days or more yearly) has been decreasing constantly. In 2007, there was a 3.8 percent decrease from the previous year, bringing the count to 204,000 workers. By type of fishery, coastal fishery workers (including marine aquaculture workers) numbered 178,000 and offshore and pelagic fishery workers 26,000. Among male workers, the ratio of those aged 65 years and over was 37.4 percent, showing the progressive trend of an aging workforce.
Japan's food self-sufficiency rate, in terms of calories, dropped from 73 percent in fiscal 1965 to 40 percent in fiscal 2007. The principal cause for the major drop in the food self-sufficiency rate is the fact that a significant change in the diet of Japanese led to a lower consumption of rice, a crop in which Japan is self-sufficient, while there was an increase in consumption of animal and lipid products that domestic agricultural production alone cannot supply sufficiently.
In fiscal 2007, the self-sufficiency rate (on an item-specific weight basis) was 100 percent in rice, 14 percent in wheat, 7 percent in beans, 81 percent in vegetables, 41 percent in fruits, 56 percent in meat and 62 percent in seafood. Although completely self-sufficient in rice, the staple food of its people, Japan relied almost entirely on imports for wheat and bean supply.
Japan's present food self-sufficiency rate is the lowest among major industrialized countries, and Japan is thus the world's largest food importing country.
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