Agriculture

Japan has one of the most developed biotechnology sectors in the world, as evidenced by the high number of patents filed. The number of bio venture start-ups peaked in 2013 and  several foreign firms are now trying to enter the market.

Until recently, Japanese agriculture experienced a long period of contraction. Since 1990, the value of Japan’s agricultural production has decreased by more than 25% and the number of commercial farm households and agricultural workers by more than 50%.

Overall Japan has a shrinking agricultural sector, demonstrated by government data showing the number of full-time farmers at 1.7 million in 2014, declining from 2.2 million a decade earlier.

Japan remains one of the world’s largest per-capita importers of food and feed produced using modern biotechnologies.

Organic farming represents a new trend in the Japanese agricultural scenario, even though this type of agriculture is still small in Japan. Before the 1950s, the use of fertilisers was extremely rare, making traditional cultivation organic.