Rice Farmers Feel Crisis Due to Aging Population, Offering 10 Million Yen Annual Income to Support Young People

"There's a lot of abandoned farmland around here. Farmers are leaving areas where the growing conditions are poor," sighed Kuwano Tetsunori (54), an employee of Odate City's Agriculture Policy Division, as he stood along the Yoneshiro River that flows through Odate City, Akita Prefecture, in early May. Weeds are growing everywhere that were once rice paddies. It is estimated that there is an amount of abandoned farmland in the city as a whole eq…