Via the Telegraph:
In a high-tech country that grew rich selling cars and electronics, young farmers are standing up to reinvent the image of agriculture. Organic farming converts, rice-growing Tokyo fashionistas and other young green fingers have trickled back into rural Japan, where many farm towns have been slowly dying amid fast-greying Japan’s demographic crunch.
Japan, the world’s second-largest economy, now imports 60 per cent of its food, and many worry about future food security if climate change affects global food supplies or energy costs increase international grain prices.
No matter how big Japan’s economy is, no matter how much cash it stacks up, this country will soon be unable to buy so much food from overseas,” Yusuke Miyaji, 31, recently told a crowd of young farmers.
“I want to make a job in the primary sector cool, striking and profitable,” said Miyaji, dressed in overalls, to applause from his audience. “Kids should dream of becoming farmers, not baseball players!”
Miyaji, who comes from a pig farming family, has created a network called Kosegare, a word meaning “farmer’s son”, that has attracted more than 200 young farmers and supporters who share his sense of crisis.