I am looking to start a small farm business in Japan. I would like to find farm land that has not been used in years to put it back into production. I would start small with maybe 1/2 to 1 acre and lease the land.
The area I am looking at I know is where I used to live and I know there are people there I could hire for help if needed. I already have farming experience both in Japan and out of Japan.
Has anyone started a small farm in Japan? I am looking for help in this area to even see how doable this is for me.
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Pretty sure you need to be recognized as an “official farmer” in the specific town you want to live in before you are allowed to lease farm land. The people I know who aren’t farmers using farm land don’t have officials leases. The owners just asked around for someone willing to use it for free to keep the land in use. Have you talked to city hall yet?
Small sized hobby farms are cool, but honestly it seems like it’s very difficult to start small and grow a business small farm based off of what I have heard. People who do well join the local 農林公社 and get trained in farming for two years, get federal and local government start up money, and start on a larger scale(of course scale changes based off of what you are growing).
Have you checked for regulatory requirements? Japan is strange in this way. You may not be able to just fire up a farm, especially for commercial purposes.
Your biggest hurdle is going to finding someone willing to rent/sell you land. Actual farm land are generally fixed in what you’re allowed to grow, changing it maybe possible but requires a whole bunch of Japanese bureaucracy.
You can try going to your town/city hall and check if they have a new farmers training program. You can also check if you can apply for the new farmers grants at the same time.
Good luck with this, we need more people like you with this drive to produce food. I am going to work on a small home garden to try and be a tiny bit self sufficient.
Your local Nochu (Japan Agriculture) office will be more than happy to help you find land, lease/rent/buy equipment, acquire seeds. Go to the JA office in the town of your land and you’ll be set. They are absolutely dying to have new farmers.
One of my adult students has in laws that farm. They make very little money. They’re super old too and they can’t hire people because they don’t make enough money to pay them. She and her husband have to go help them harvest.
Just letting you know.
First step, go to city hall and ask for the requirements to rent land. You can’t do anything without the land. In my area, you don’t need to be an official farmer but you do need to already be working land to rent land. The land must also be be a certain distance from your home and I think you have to show that you have the tools and equipment needed to grow what you want to grow. You also need a plan of what you want to grow but that can be as simple as listing the vegetables. Once you do that, they will sort out land for you to rent. Starting from zero without doing the agricultural training is hard to do.
The place to ask about this is
https://www.japansimplelife.com
Hi there! As my not-so-creative username suggests, I’m a full-time organic farmer in the Kanto area. This year is our third full season of diversified year-round growing. It’s just my wife and I managing two acres of land we’ve rented on a ten year lease. We mostly sell direct to customers in Tokyo (her hometown area) and we also send weekly CSA boxes. There are a few local markets that we also participate in.
As for starting, I must admit that my wife’s taken care of all of the paperwork and bureaucratic requirements that have gotten us this far. I will say that our local city has been very supportive, offering a subsidy for the first five years and financial assistance with starting costs (buying greenhouse parts, row cover, small machinery, etc).
If you’d like to ask any specific questions, I’m happy to offer an answer based on our experiences up to now. Farm on! ✊🏽
I work with greenhouses. You might be surprised to hear that 1 acre (about .4 ha) is a fairly sized farm in Japan for any crop besides rice. The huge industrialization of farming you see in some other countries is less common-instead there are very many small-time farmers working with cooperatives. I’m working on a 2 ha house right now and that is huge effing news.
Just suggesting that you might want to think even smaller when starting out. The regulatory stuff is a nightmare as everyone else said, (which we do encounter in construction), but I’m sure there must be labor or other reasons that farms tend to stay so small that I’m not directly aware of.
You say you’ve got experience so I expect you already have some idea of what those may be. Good luck!
My in-laws are farmers, growing premium fruit, and they are not rich but make a very decent living from some tiny plots. FIL is a shrewd guy though and they sell processed products too like jam, liqueurs, etc and also do a lot of direct sales instead of relying on JA/wholesale.
If you have good business sense and actually manage to get all the permissions to do it, I think it’s quite doable. A lot of farmers in Japan make no money but also have 0 business acumen and just follow tradition/JA.