This study clarifies that the role of foreign workers in Japanese agriculture has become very important both for family farms and for corporation farms. The main type of foreign workers supporting Japanese farms is technical intern and they are now almost more than 10 percent of all employees of farms with higher share of farmers working in several areas where foreign workers are being permitted for kinds of agriculture due to technical intern training program. The current severe lack of labor has made it necessary for Japanese agriculture to accept more foreign workers in different styles among family farms and corporation farms.

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Under the current situation with a shortage of agricultural manpower, the number of people farming with disability is increasing. To examine and represent this reality, the current research compares and analyzes typical cases of the movement from social welfare corporations, focusing on staff and disabled people visiting farms together to help with farm work, while adjusting for overall trends in agriculture and welfare cooperations. As a typical case of farming with disabled poople, the research covers matching support between welfare facilities for disabled people and farmers with shortage of manpower who gain disabled labor through the “Kagawa Councial Prefecture Employment Center. ” In the case of the “Hinari” Hamamatsu office, a special subsidiary, its relationship with eight farmers and agricultural corporations is examined. In contrasting cases, the research examines the approaches ot “Kokoron, ” which developed farming contracts from famers and agriculture corporations while engaging in faming business by themselves, as well as “Omori Farm, ” where an agricultural corporation set up welfare facilities for disabled people and started full scale employment of disabled people.

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This paper clarifies the impact of labor shortages on the distribution of agricultural products. While a full analysis would include total agricultural product distribution, including each process, such as production, collection, fruit and vegetable sorting facility, shipment, market, processing, and retailing, the present research focuses on the following two points. The first issue is how to secure labor at agricultural cooperative distribution facilities (mainly fruit and vegetable sorting facilities) and the second issue concerns the labor shortage in the distribution of agricultural products. The problem of labor shortages in the fruit and vegetable sorting facility was due to efforts to stabilize the employment of laborers. These efforts included outsourcing, re-outsourcing, combinations of labor practices, and expansion together wit support by agricultural cooperatives. In other words, the organizational adjustment of employment developed in a multilayered manner. The broader problem of labor shortages in the distribution of agricultural products has already affected production areas, where remote production areas are limited in terms of shipping destinations. While methodological issues with the research remain, it is clearly necessary to examine essential issues such as the relationship between labor shortages and structurally low prices of agricultural products. Securing a sufficient labor force in the agricultural product distribution process is considered to play an important role in production support and shipment. However, this problem cannot be solved by responses undertaken by farmers and agricultural cooperatives alone. Therefore, urgent examination and countermeasures are necessary.

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Agricultural cooperative groups are working to support workforce in various ways, in order to maintain and develop agricultural production. ZEN-NOH is also supporting regional revitalization mainly through the promotion of regional agriculture and labor support. The outsourcing system of farm work by ZEN-NOH Oita Headquarters has been established as an advanced model in cooperation with local companies. This paper introduces ZEN-NOH's approach toward labor support, specifically focuses on the Oita's model case.

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[in Japanese]

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