Abstract
The purpose of this study was threefold: to gain insight into how absentee heirs engage in agricultural work at their parents’homes and with other residents in the community by conducting a questionnaire survey with heirs that have relocated to intermediate and mountainous areas, to analyze factors that contribute to an absentee heir’s intent to engage in agriculture work in the future, and to summarize the challenges heirs encounter when carrying out agricultural activities and the means by which a cooperative system can be implemented. The study found no significant correlation between the number of times absentee heirs returned to their community of birth and the substantive support in agricultural work they provided at their parents’homes. However, it did point out that their intent to engage in agricultural work was affected by whether they had siblings and other relatives, and the distance between their current place of residence and their community of birth. Interestingly, heirs that relocated from communities with a high degree of farmland deterioration and only a small number of households were relatively more eager to engage in farming. The challenge in using farmland together with absentee heirs is that current households in these communities and absentee heirs have no means of cooperatively addressing community-wide agricultural challenges because of the severity of farmland deterioration and the number of small-scale family farms. Moving forward, the government (Yamaguchi City) will be required to mediate between residents and absentee heirs by working with the Sodateru-kai (Society for Growth), that is alr eady active in the community, and by continuing to conduct surveys concerning its farmland.
