Improving working conditions in Japan’s agriculture sector

14 February 2023

Author: Yusaku Yoshikawa, JIN Corporation

In 2019, the Japanese government introduced the Work Style Reform Law which sought to increase diversity in the workplace and improve working conditions. But reform has not been sufficiently discussed in one of the industries that needs it the most — agriculture.

The agriculture industry in Japan has suffered a dramatic decrease in labour, with the number of farmers decreasing by 50,000 per year. The majority of them are small-scale farmers with side jobs, who are also ageing at an advanced stage.

It has been a challenge for the sector to attract young farmers. In 2021, 52,300 farmers joined but nearly two-thirds of them were over 50 years old. The turnover rate of agricultural workers is also higher than in other sectors. The most common reasons for changing jobs are discontentment with working conditions, long labour hours and low incomes.

Despite some efforts being made to improve the working conditions of agricultural workers, such as discussions by the Exploratory Committee on Work Style Reform in Agriculture organised by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF), there is still a long way to go in extending the reforms.

Agriculture in Japan has long been considered a ‘family business’, with a blurred boundary between work and life. The 2020 Census of Agriculture and Forestry compiled by MAFF reported that 96 per cent of agricultural management bodies in Japan were still family-owned. On the contrary, employed workers have conventionally not been very common. Because farming activities are mostly seasonal, workers are usually employed only during the busy harvest season. Yet, Japan’s Labour Standards Act only applies to employed workers and excludes family workers engaged in agriculture.

Government statistics and laws related to employed workers in the agricultural sector are often different from those in other sectors. For example, the MAFF Census classification of employed agricultural workers — as employees that work more than seven months per year — does not match the commonly used distinction of regular and non-regular employment.

The Labour Standards Act stipulates that extra wages for overtime and holiday work do not apply to agriculture. The law also excludes the industry from regulations concerning the minimum requirement for break time and holidays for farmers, based on the understanding that agricultural work is subject to seasonal and climate conditions.

But employed workers in agriculture have become more common, especially for newcomers. 22.1 per cent of new farmers in 2021 were employed workers. For new farmers below 49 years old, 8,540 were employed workers, outnumbering the 7,190 self-employed farmers. Still, there is a lot of room to improve farmers’ working conditions further. In 2021, MAFF’s Policy Research Institute reported that 27 per cent of men and 17 per cent of women regularly employed in the agricultural sector worked over 300 days a year.

According to the report, the annual income of regularly employed workers in the sector is low compared to other industries. The average annual income for men working in the agricultural sector was 3.1 million yen (US$22,100) in 2017, compared to 5.2 million yen (US$37,200) for other industries. Women agricultural workers earned only 1.9 million yen (US$14,000) compared to an average annual income of 3.3 million yen (US$23,700). This income gap only widens as the workers’ age increases.

The working conditions for non-regular employees including part-time workers are even more challenging. In the agricultural sector, 46.8 per cent of male workers and 77.8 per cent of female workers were not regularly employed in 2017. Since they were hired for short-term contracts, their annual income was only 2 million yen (US$28,000) for men and 800,000 yen (US$6,000) for women.

Part of the reason for this low income is that agricultural management entities are having trouble securing profit out of the business which has suffered from low market prices of products and an increase in agricultural input costs such as fertiliser.

Foreign workers, such as the Technical Intern Training Program trainees, are also in vulnerable positions. The Program originally aimed to develop the capacity of trainees from countries like Vietnam and the Philippines but many criticise that it has become a means to secure cheap labour in the agriculture industry. The trainees cannot change their workplaces and often suffer from mistreatment, such as violations of security standards. Still, some good practices are balancing pleasant working environments with productivity. In these practices, comfortable working conditions have successfully attracted workers.

As the proportion of employed workers increases, agriculture is becoming less of a ‘family business’ in Japan and transforming into a more ordinary industry in terms of its working style. If this situation continues, improved working conditions for agricultural workers will eventually sustain the industry by contributing to solving challenges such as labour shortages.

Yusaku Yoshikawa is an aid consultant at JIN Corporation.

French jobless figures dip to lowest level in 15 years

Issued on: 14/02/2023 -

RFI/AFP 

Text by: Michael Fitzpatrick

The last three months of 2022 saw the number of French people out of work stabilise at 7.2 percent of the active population, the lowest jobless rate recorded since 2008.
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Figures released on Tuesday by the French National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies,(Insee) show that there were 2.2 million unemployed at the end of last year, a reduction of 45,000 compared to the previous three months.

The unemployment rate has thus declined to a level last attained in the first quarter of 2008.

The national statistics agency has been careful to exclude the period of the Covid epidemic from its calculations and comparisons, since many job seekers gave up the hunt for work during the periods of confinement.

Several members of the ruling party have hailed the figures;

Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne welcomed the news, reaffirming the government's determination to get the jobless rate below 5 percent of the active population by 2027.

Labour Minister Olivier Dussopt said the statistics were good news, especially since the figures to which the present situation is being compared, in the early months of 2008, was itself unprecedented in the previous 40 years.

 
Good news, not great news

Not everyone has been equally enthusiastic.

Mathieu Plane, an economist at the French Observatory of Economic Indicators (OFCE), says the figures are certainly positive.

"It's better than the expected stagnation," he says, "but the margin of change is very slight."

The employment statistics are coherent when compared to last week's figures showing that the level of job creation had remained stable over the closing three months of 2022, after nearly two years of uninterrupted growth.

The Insee's employment analyst, Yves Jauneau, points to the important details concealed by the overall figures.

In particular, the employment rate in the 15-64 age bracket is 68.3 percent, the highest level since 1975.

By age group, those between 15 and 24 have seen their unemployment rate decline by one point to 17 percent; 6.5 percent of those in the 25-49 bracket are out of work, showing long-term stability; and the rate of joblessness among those over 50 is also steady, at 5 percent.

BULLDOZERS OF ISLAMOPHOBIA

Soaring demolitions of Palestinian homes must stop: UN experts

“Israel’s tactics of forcibly displacing and evicting the Palestinian population appear to have no limits,” they said.

A member of the Israeli border police stands guard at the site of a demolished house in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of East Jerusalem January 19, 2022. (Reuters)

AFP
Published: 13 February ,2023

United Nations rights experts called Monday on the world community to act to stop a dramatic surge in Israel’s “systematic and deliberate” demolition of Palestinian housing.

In the month of January alone, Israeli authorities reportedly demolished 132 Palestinian structures across 38 communities in the occupied West Bank, including 34 residential structures, the three independent experts said in a statement.

The Special Rapporteurs for rights in the Palestinian Territory, the right to adequate housing and the rights of internally displaced people, said the demolitions marked a 135-percent increase compared to January 2022.

The figures are based on those of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

“The systematic demolition of Palestinian homes, erection of illegal Israeli settlements and systematic denial of building permits for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank amounts to ‘domicide’,” they said.

In late 2022, the Special Rapporteur on the right to housing, Balakrishnan Rajagopal, called for “domicide” -- defined as the massive, arbitrary destruction of civilian housing in violent conflict -- to be recognized as a crime under international law.

“Direct attacks on the Palestinian people’s homes, schools, livelihoods and water sources are nothing but Israel’s attempts to curtail the Palestinians’ right to self-determination and to threaten their very existence,” the experts said in Monday’s statement.

The experts, who are appointed by the UN Human Rights Council but who do not speak on behalf of the United Nations, reiterated their concern over the situation in the occupied West Bank’s Masafer Yatta villages.

They warned that more than 1,100 Palestinian residents there remained at “imminent risk of forced eviction, arbitrary displacement and demolitions of their homes, livelihood, water and sanitation structures.”

“Israel’s tactics of forcibly displacing and evicting the Palestinian population appear to have no limits,” they said.

“In occupied East Jerusalem, tens of Palestinian families also face imminent risks of forced evictions and displacement, due to discriminatory zoning and planning regimes that favor Israeli settlement expansion - the act that is illegal under international law and amounts to a war crime.”

The experts’ statement came a day after Israel’s security cabinet announced it would legalize nine settlements in the occupied West Bank following a series of attacks in east Jerusalem.

More than 475,000 Israelis reside in settlements in the West Bank, where 2.8 million Palestinians live.

Read more: Arab leaders warn Israeli actions in Jerusalem, West Bank threaten regional turmoil

ZIONIST ETHNIC CLEANSING

Israel troops kill Palestinian teen during arrest raid

Mourners carry the body of Palestinian Ameer Bustami, who was killed in a predawn Israeli army raid, during his funeral in Nablus in the occupied West Bank on February 13, 2023. 

AFP
Published: 14 February ,2023

Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian teenager in the occupied West Bank early Tuesday, Palestinian officials said, with the army saying troops opened fire after the suspect approached them with explosives.

The Palestinian health ministry said Mahmud Majid Mohammed al-Aidi, 17, died from “critical wounds he sustained by live occupation (Israeli) bullets to the head” at Al-Fara refugee camp north of Nablus.

The army said Israeli troops carried out “counterterrorism operations” in several West Bank towns and cities early on Tuesday.

“During activity in the Al-Fara camp, a Palestinian suspect approached the soldiers with an explosive device. The soldiers responded with live fire. A hit was identified,” the army said, without commenting specifically on Aidi’s reported death.

Camp official Assem Mansour told AFP: “The Israeli army entered the camp from various directions after midnight, and surrounded the house of a wanted person.”

The ministry separately announced the death of Haroun Rasmi Yussuf Abu Aram, 25, from injuries sustained “two years ago from live bullets of the occupation in Masafer Yatta,” an area of the West Bank where many Palestinians have been evicted from their homes by the army, who have declared it a military zone.

On Monday, Asil Sawaed, a 22-year-old Israeli policeman from a Bedouin town in northern Israel, was killed after being stabbed by an assailant and inadvertently shot by an armed guard who intended to hit the attacker but missed.

Since the start of this year, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has claimed the lives of 48 Palestinian adults and children, including militants and civilians.

Nine Israeli civilians, including three children, one Ukrainian civilian and a police officer have been killed over the same period, according to an AFP tally based on official sources from both sides.

 

London has ‘hidden army’ of involuntarily economically inactive people, Centre for Cities data show

7th February 2023

The think tank says the problem is more acute in the north of the country, but the numbers in the capital affected are very large

CHARLES WRIGHT

Official unemployment figures for the capital could be failing to count large numbers of working-age people who are “involuntarily economically inactive”, according to the latest Cities Outlook research from the Centre for Cities think tank.

The centre’s annual snapshot of the economic performance of the UK’s 63 largest cities and towns highlights the growing numbers of working-age people neither in work nor looking for a job due to circumstances beyond their control, such as ill-health or lack of suitable opportunities – a “hidden army” some three million strong.

This concealed unemployment rate generally affects northern towns and cities more acutely, but other areas including London are not immune.

“The rate of forced inactivity is lower in the greater south east, but the numbers are still very large, which is sometimes missed,” said Centre for Cities research director Paul Swinney. “One point one million are in forced inactivity across the region, the majority in the capital.”

The centre’s data show that while there is a shortage of jobs in many areas, in others, including London, a more buoyant jobs market should have more capacity to accommodate those currently inactive.

“The jobs are there, but how do we connect people to those jobs?” said Swinney. “The problem is smaller but there is definitely a problem to think about.”

The capital has consistently had higher unemployment rates than elsewhere and at 4.3 per cent its official rate is the second highest of any UK region. It remains an economic powerhouse, however, according to the centre – consistently at or near the top of the league on productivity, business start-ups and jobs growth and on its number of “new economy” companies, skills and education levels and salaries.

But behind the headlines lie significant inequalities and, according to Swinney, as well as tackling the poor health and low skills keeping a sizeable number of working-age Londoners out of the jobs market, the city needs to deal with what he called the “costs of growth” such as the increasing unaffordability of housing, as well as the perhaps surprising fact  that London has more days of poor air quality than anywhere else in the UK – 36 of them in 2021/22.

The average house price in the capital last year was £694,700, the highest in the country, and 14.2 times the average wage, the centre finds, while the of new homes being built continues to fall short of the demand for them.

The homelessness charity Shelter last month reported that nearly 150,000 people in London are living in temporary accommodation, accounting for more than half the England total, and Sadiq Khan used a committee appearance in Parliament to call on government to “wake up” to a growing housing crisis.

The Mayor argued that with private rents in the capital up 16 per cent over the past 12 months, reaching an average of £2,343 a month, City Hall should be granted the power to freeze them for two years, “stabilising” the market and saving renters some £3,000.

Separately, a new survey of global cities by the London Property Alliance has highlighted “warning signs” about the capital’s economic growth, including faltering new homes delivery.

Slides illustrating the cities outlook 2023 findings are here.

Brexit deals UK economy ‘productivity penalty’ of £29 billion – or £1k per household

An external member of the Bank's monetary policy committee said a wave of investment "stopped in its tracks" in 2016 following the vote.

 by Jack Peat
2023-02-14 


Brexit has dealt the UK economy a “productivity penalty” of £29 billion, a Bank of England policymaker has said, which works out at the equivalent of £1,000 per household.

Jonathan Haskel, an external member of the Bank’s monetary policy committee, said a wave of investment “stopped in its tracks” in 2016 following the vote.

He said the UK had “suffered much more” of a productivity slowdown than other large economies because of Brexit.

Speaking to The Overshoot, Haskel was asked why he thought the UK was an “extreme outlier” when it came to facing a slowdown in productivity.

He said: “Yes, we suffered much more. A bit of that is that we have this larger financial sector. But I think it really goes back to Brexit.

“If you look in the period up to 2016, it’s true that we had a bigger slowdown in productivity up to 2016, but we had a lot of investment. We had a big boom between 2012-ish to 2016.

“But then investment just plateaued from 2016, and we dropped to the bottom of G7 countries.”

Haskel said that the Brexit referendum had an impact on economic growth as a result of the reduction in trade, with the UK opting to leave the EU and its single market and secure trade deals elsewhere.

He referred to a calculation to show what the UK economy could have looked like if investment had carried on growing at the rate it had been before the referendum, compared to what it is currently growing at.

Haskel described the hit to the economy as the “productivity penalty”, which amounted to about 1.3 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). GDP is an important tool for looking at how well, or badly, an economy is doing.

“That 1.3 per cent of GDP is about £29 billion, or roughly £1,000 per household,” he added.

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Ecology: Exploring the evidence behind the ‘wood-wide web’

Nature Ecology & Evolution

February 14, 2023

Citation bias and the over-interpretation of results could be leading to a misinterpretation of common mycorrhizal networks — the ‘wood-wide web’— and their role in forests, a Perspective published in Nature Ecology & Evolution argues. The findings, based on literature reviews and citation analysis, suggest that three common claims about the networks of mycorrhizal fungi are insufficiently supported by scientific evidence.

Many plant species, including forest trees, benefit from partnerships with mycorrhizal fungi, which live on plants’ roots and spread in vast networks under the forest floor. That trees can communicate with each other through these fungal networks, for example by sending warning signals to their offspring when damaged, has gained recent traction in the popular media and scientific literature. However, the role of these networks has been debated.

Justine Karst and colleagues analysed evidence for three common claims about common mycorrhizal networks (CMNs) from the media and scientific literature. The authors find that claims that CMNs are widespread in forests and that they transfer resources and increase seedling performance are insufficiently supported because the results from field studies vary, have alternative explanations or are too limited to support generalizations. They also find that claims that older trees communicate with offspring through CMNs are not supported by any peer-reviewed or published evidence. To examine citations, the authors looked at how 593 papers on CMN structure and 1,083 papers on CMN function referenced findings from 18 early influential papers. They found citations making unsupported statements have risen to 25% for CMN structure and almost 50% for CMN function, and also document a bias toward citing positive effects.

The authors conclude that claims about the positive effects of CMNs are disconnected from the available evidence. They indicate that further research is needed to explore these networks.

This press release refers to a Nature Ecology & Evolution Perspective piece, not a Nature Ecology & Evolution research article. A Perspective is a format for scholarly reviews and discussions of the primary research literature. They are peer reviewed.

doi:10.1038/s41559-023-01986-1

https://www.ursulakleguin.com/the-word-for-world-is-forest

The Word for World is Forest - Ursula K. Le Guin 

The Word for World Is Forest was originally published in the anthology Again, Dangerous Visions in 1972. It was published as a standalone book in 1976 by ...

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ursula-k-le-guin-the-word-for-world-is-forest-1

The Word for World Is Forest | The Anarchist Library 

Written in the glare of the United States' war on Indochina, and first published as a separate book in that war's dire aftermath, The Word for World is Forest ...

Natural hazards: Global threat of glacial lake outburst floods assessed

Nature Communications

February 8, 2023

About 15 million people globally could be under threat from glacial lake outburst floods — with populations living in High Mountains Asia (India, Pakistan, China) and the Andes (Peru and Bolivia) the most exposed to this danger — suggests a study published in Nature Communications. The paper reports that more than half of the globally exposed population are found in just four countries: India, Pakistan, Peru, and China.

As climate warming melts glaciers, melt water can collect to form lakes close to glaciers. These lakes represent a substantial natural hazard in the form of glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs). These floods can often happen with little prior warning when a natural dam containing a glacial lake fails. GLOFs have the potential to damage property and infrastructure and have previously resulted in extensive loss of life.

Tom Robinson, Caroline Taylor and colleagues present a global compilation of glacial lake conditions, exposure, and vulnerability mapping, to quantify and rank the damage potential from GLOFs in 2020. They found that populations living in India, Pakistan, China, Peru, and Bolivia are the most exposed. The authors highlight the Andes as an under-studied hotspot of GLOF danger and suggest that this region should be targeted for more detailed study. They note that areas with the highest danger are not those with the largest, most numerous, or most rapidly growing glacial lakes, but rather the number of people within the region and their capacity to cope with disaster that is central to their risk.

By identifying regions with the highest GLOF danger, the findings could allow for more targeted GLOF risk management. How GLOF danger might change in the future remains subject to debate. As glaciers continue to recede owing to climate change, existing glacial lakes will expand and many new lakes will form, altering the spatial pattern of GLOF danger. Further research is required to evaluate temporal changes in lake conditions, exposure, and vulnerability to determine the relative roles of each for GLOF risk.

Glacial lake outburst floods threaten millions globally | Nature Communications

Shell lawsuit: Institutional investors back legal challenge over climate risk

BY:CITY AM REPORTER


A group of European institutional investors is backing a novel London lawsuit against energy giant Shell’s board over alleged climate mismanagement in a case that could have far-reaching implications for how companies tackle emissions.

Client Earth, an environmental law charity turned activist Shell investor, said it had filed a High Court claim on Wednesday, alleging Shell’s 11 directors have failed to manage the “material and foreseeable” risks posed to the company by climate change – and that they are breaking company law.

It is the first, notable lawsuit by a shareholder against a board over the alleged failure to properly prepare for a shift away from fossil fuels – and comes one week after Shell posted a record $40 billion profit for 2022, partly fuelled by the energy crunch after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Shell rejected the allegations, saying its climate targets were ambitious and on track and that its directors complied with their legal duties and acted in the company’s best interests.

READ MORE
Equinor joins rivals Shell and BP with record £23.8bn profits as Norwegian energy giant props up Europe’s gas supplies

Carbon conflict: Shell struggles with green agenda

Shell has ramped up spending on renewable energy and low-carbon technologies.

But British pension funds London CIV and Nest, Swedish pension fund AP3, French asset manager Sanso IS, Degroof Petercam Asset Management in Belgium and Denmark’s Danske Bank Asset Management and Danica Pension and AP Pension are among those to have written letters supporting the claim.

The investor group has around £450bn ($543bn) in assets under management collectively, and owns about 12m of Shell’s seven billion shares.

London CIV said its Shell stake was a “primary hotspot of risk and exposure within our portfolio”.

“We hope the whole energy industry sits up and takes notice,” added Mark Fawcett, Nest’s chief investment officer.

If judges allow the so-called derivative action to proceed, it could encourage investors in other companies, including in those funding carbon emitters, to litigate against boards that fail to adequately manage climate-related risks, experts say.

Some banks are reducing their funding of fossil fuel companies.

The case comes two years after Shell was ordered to slash carbon emissions in a landmark Dutch climate case.

Shell, which is appealing, plans to reduce the carbon intensity of its products – which measures greenhouse gas emissions per unit of energy produced – by 20 per cent by 2030, 45 per cent by 2035 and by 100 per cent by 2050 from 2016 levels.

According to third-party assessments, the strategy excludes short to medium-term targets to cut the absolute emissions from products Shell sells, known as Scope 3 emissions, although they account for more than 90 per cent of overall emissions, Client Earth said.

“The board is persisting with a transition strategy that is fundamentally flawed, leaving the company seriously exposed to the risks that climate change poses to Shell’s future success – despite the board’s legal duty to manage those risks,” said Client Earth’s senior lawyer Paul Benson.

The UK Companies Act imposes a legal duty on directors to promote the success of businesses.

Client Earth declined to divulge which other companies it has invested in.

Reuters – Kirstin Ridley, additional reporting by Simon Jessop and Shadia Nasralla

 MIND THE GAP

U.S. Gen Z is historically slow getting driver's licenses. Boomers aren't letting theirs go.

PETER WEBER

FEB.14,2023

Olivia Rodrigo is, evidently, an anomaly. Unlike the singer, who got her driver's license at age 16 in 2020 and recorded a hit song about it a year later, most members of Generation Z (born 1996 to 2012) do not get their license before age 18 anymore, according to Federal Highway Administration data and multiple surveys. In 2021, 25 percent of U.S. 16-year-olds and 42 percent of 17-year-olds had a driver's license. 

In 1997, 43 percent of 16-year-olds and 62 percent of 17-year-olds had their driver's license, The Washington Post noted Monday. "Even older members of Gen Z are lagging behind their millennial counterparts. In 1997, almost 90 percent of 20- to 25 year-olds had licenses; in 2020, it was only 80 percent." 

U.S. Driver's Licenses, 2021

Federal Highway Administration

The Post runs through several reasons for this shift away from car culture — cost of auto insurance, fear of accidents, environmental and climate concerns, comfort with public transportation, and ride-sharing apps, among them. "If there's an emergency, I'll call an Uber or 911," Philadelphia resident Madison Corr, 24, told the Post.

But if Gen Z is shunning cars, the Baby Boomers (born 1946 to 1964) are holding tight to the wheel. In 2021, 91 percent of older boomers — age 70 to 74 — had a driver's license, versus about 85 percent in 1997. And an eye-catching 69 percent of Americans 85 and older still had their driver's license in 2021 (including 88 percent of 85+ men). That's a "hefty increase from 43 percent in 1997," the Post notes.

"Millennials went through a similar phase" in their teen years, the Post reports, and though many of them got their license and joined the commuting masses when they got married, had kids, and/or moved out of urban centers, they still drive less than Gen X and the boomers at similar life stages, according to a 2021 study. 

"It's too early to tell if the same will be true for Generation Z," the Post writes. After all, "its youngest members are only 10 years old, and the COVID-19 pandemic has likely interrupted some driving plans of older Gen Zers." But if the trend holds, U.S. carbon emissions will drop, as will car sales, and public policy will have to adapt. You can read more about Gen Z and driving at The Washington Post.