Abstract
There are technical, economic, and social aspects to the utilization of agricultural residues for energy production, though these are important from the viewpoint of global warming. In addition, the stable supply of agricultural residues in Japan might be difficult in the future because agriculture here employs few young workers, with the proportion of old actually having increased in recent times. In this study, we therefore develop a model to estimate the production of agricultural residues taking into account the population and composition of agricultural workers. This model was applied to Hyogo prefecture as a case study, and the outlook for the production of agricultural residues in the period from fiscal year ending March 2011 (FY2010) to fiscal year ending March 2031 (FY2030) was estimated. It was found that agriculture workforce will reduced from 150 thousand in FY2010 to 63 thousand in FY2030. Accordingly, the production of agricultural residues will decline from 7.8 million tonnes to 3.8 million tonnes. Further, if the proportion of workers aged 14-44 were to be raised by 20%, then agricultural residues production may increase by 25% over FY2010-FY2030.
