Interesting piece in the New York Times today about a farming stimulus plan meant to put young, underpaid, urbanites back into the fields to get them into productive jobs and to literally rejuvenate the farming community.
So where is this happening? Japan, where there remains a reverence for farming and, presumably, where farmers aren’t summarily dismissed as hicks and know-nothing rednecks.
The Times reports that Prime Minister Taro Aso included a farming pilot plan in his economic stimulus plan. The idea is to dispatch 2,400 underpaid or underemployed 20s and 30s somethings to work as part of a Rural Labor Squad.
[T]he program stems from growing concern about both the plight of Japan’s younger workers and the dismal state of farms. In a play on words, the squad’s name in Japanese — Inaka-de-hatarakitai — is also its rallying cry: ‘We want to work in the countryside!’
I like the idea of subsidizing farm workers, especially for the midsized farms in the U.S. that are getting squeezed out of business.
Another interesting tidbit from the piece is that young urbanites are flocking to farm education programs. An Osaka ag job fair attracted an impressive 1,400 potential farm job applicants.
Wow.
Virtual Farmgirl 