The Effect of Agricultural Experience on Environmental Awareness and Eating Habits among Rural Children in Japan

Abstract

  The rapid modernization and westernization has led to more and more Japanese forget the relations between environment and the agriculture production and a Japanese original gastronomic culture .Therefore, how to improve people’s,　especially the young generation ,awareness of the values of the environment, agriculture production and keep their Japanese traditional eating habit has become an important problem. So far many relevant researches have been conducted in Japan, however, the majority of which focus on the city area. This research analyzed the effects of farming experience on the environmental awareness, agriculture production and eating habits among rural children in Japan. The results indicated that farming experiment could significantly improve rural children’s awareness of environment and agriculture production, except for their daily eating habit. Therefore further researches should be done to detect the factors which could positively change their behavior of eating habit.