BBC - With 1/3 Of Workers Temporaries, Young Japanese Look At Going Back To Rural Life

[hatrack]

EDIT

One weekend in October Megumi Sakaguchi joined a bus tour through the Japanese countryside.

Like her fellow passengers, who were also from the cities, she was getting a taste of what life would be like as a farmer - trying out working the land for a day. Excursions like this around apple orchards and greenhouses full of strawberry plants, talking to farmers in their fields, take place pretty much every week somewhere in rural Japan.

They are organised and paid for by local authorities which are desperate to repopulate the countryside. After years of young people heading for the cities the average farmer in Japan is now 65.8 years old and that figure is rising steadily.

But now some are considering making the journey back. "There are more people that want to be farmers now, and the numbers are increasing," says Naoko Maruyama, a local government official who uses a website to attract potential recruits. "More people from the city want a rural life. Here in Nagano prefecture we want to help them. But at the same time it takes a lot to become a farmer."

EDIT

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15850243

[snappyturtle]

1. Sounds good to me! nt