G8: FROM THE U.S. TO JAPAN, WORKERS ARE RETURNING TO THE COUNTRYSIDE

While the Japanese government has implemented a plan to transfer young unemployed workers to the countryside for training in agricultural jobs, the U.S. has registered an increase of 4% in agricultural work over the past 5 years. This was recently confirmed by the Italian agricultural organization, Coldiretti, who wanted to further emphasize the important role agriculture could have in combating the generally negative economic situation and the increasing and alarming unemployment rates.

According to Coldiretti, the agriculture sector in developing countries could absorb the recently unemployed from other sectors. However, these jobs require flexibility in terms of both time and place. In order to facilitate access to agriculture in Italy, the recent proposal made by the Minister of Labor, Maurizio Sacconi, to extend the work voucher system to include homemakers, after having already made it accessible to the retired and students, is a particularly important step. As well as offering new work opportunities for low income groups, it is also an aid in the general simplification of the system, making it more transparent and legal. It is a proposal that could interest hundreds of thousands of agriculture enterprises for jobs like harvesting olives, grapes, and other foods, for which producers are now having difficulty finding laborers who will do these jobs.
An successful example of exploiting a similar situation is in Japan, where the government, in order to confront the job crisis that has affected its cities resulting in thousands of lay-offs, has created a project to transfer young unemployed workers to the countryside with the goal of offering alternative work while simultaneously encouraging the agriculture sector. The project is part of a package finalized by Prime Minister Taro Aso to confront the economic crisis and foresees the initial involvement of 800 unemployed who will be offered an initial ten-day internship to learn how to produce and sell agricultural products and, successively, one year of work in agricultural areas.

In the U.S., the Department of Agriculture has registered an increasing number of Americans who are moving to the countryside and investing in agricultural activities. Since 2002, in fact, 300,000 new agriculture related businesses have been created, many of which are run by young owners. And there has also been a 30% increase in women working in the agriculture industry, reaching a total of 306,200. Overall, there are 2.2 million agricultural activities currently active in the U.S..

Coldiretti noted that this trend was taken seriously into consideration by newly elected U.S. President Obama who imposed one of his goals as that of “encouraging the youth to become farmers”, as well as supporting local, sustainable, and organic agriculture, and also, “imposing the obligation of indicating the origin of all food products on labels in order to make the distinction between imported products”.