Case Study – Sado Island, Niigata, Japan
🌿 About the Satoyama Landscape
Most farms on Sado Island grow rice. The rice is used both for selling and for farmers’ own use. Farmers also grow vegetables, usually for themselves but sometimes to sell. They also grow fruits like persimmons to sell.
⚠️ Challenges and Threats
The biggest problem for farming, forestry, and fishing on Sado Island is that there are not enough young people to take over these jobs. These jobs do not make much money and face pressure from government goals to use more technology and increase trade with other countries.
It is also hard to combine small fields into bigger ones. New farmers often get land that is scattered in different places, which makes farming difficult.
Also, many people do not know about the benefits of organic or natural farming. Because of this, there is little demand for food grown in these ways.
Finally, some forests are not well managed, which causes natural disasters. For example, in the winter of 2022, heavy wet snow made bamboo fall onto power lines. This caused power outages that lasted over a week.
