Support Measures for Solving Sixth Industry Issues

Text Mining and Self-Organization Maps

Abstract

This study clarifies the issues in the sixth industry and identifies effective support measures from the perspective of support and extension organizations. National and local governments, agricultural extension centers, and sixth industry specialists support farmers and stakeholders in developing the sixth industry in Japan. Despite this support, many efforts have been suspended or terminated. To reduce this, clarifying the issues affecting the sixth industry and its support measures and sharing information regarding successful cases is necessary.

First, the issues of the sixth industry are summarized from previous studies. These issues were identified as existing in 12 areas : “facilities and equipment,” “raw materials,” “economics,” “relationships with partners,” “business management skills,” “lack of long-term vision,” “marketing,” “securing human resources,” “technology,” “responding to troubles,” “biased business,” and “lack of regional expansion.”

Next, we conducted a questionnaire survey of prefectural departments in charge of the sixth industry and agricultural extension centers nationwide, asking about areas of concern in the respondents’ jurisdictions. The most frequently cited issues were “marketing,” “securing human resources,” and “facilities and equipment.”

In addition, comments were obtained on effective support measures for each issue. The comments were analyzed by text mining and self-organizing maps. It was found that support measures that were particularly effective for “marketing” supported the expansion of sales channels for developed products based on data obtained from monitoring surveys and questionnaires. For “securing human resources,” effective support measures included the use of help from local women, human resource development through the use of external coordinators and lecturers, and the provision of information. The most effective support measures for “facilities and equipment” were the maintenance and introduction of equipment related to food processing, lending of facilities and equipment, and inspection tours of advanced practices. Effective support measures were similarly identified for other issue areas using text mining and self-organizing maps.

As described above, text mining and self-organizing maps are useful for analyzing comments obtained from descriptive questionnaires. However, text mining and self-organizing maps alone are insufficient. It is also necessary to examine the comments obtained. Furthermore, it should be noted that just because an issue occurs more often does not necessarily mean that there will be more comments on solutions to it.

As the questionnaires in this study were distributed in March 2020 and collected from March to April, it is possible that the environment surrounding sixth industrialization changed due to the repeated declarations of a state of emergency following the coronavirus pandemic. Therefore, it is necessary to continue to study the issues and support measures for the sixth industry.