Agriculture is not profitable.
Agriculture has low productivity.
Agriculture is dependent on subsidies.
Sometimes we hear such things.
Of course, there are agricultural businesses that actually face these challenges.
However, as someone involved in agriculture, it always bothers me a little.
Which agriculture are you talking about?
In the first place, the scope of what the word ‘agriculture’ refers to is wider than we think.
Even just raising cattle is a completely different job.
For example, livestock farming.
If you hear about the job of raising cattle, you probably think of milk or beef.
However, the purpose of production differs between dairy cows and beef cattle.
Even with beef cattle, there are breeding operations that raise calves and fattening operations that raise cattle to maturity.
Even though they handle the same cattle, the necessary equipment, technology, and the time it takes to recover funds are different.
What about sheep, then?
Not only mutton, but wool is also an important product.
For chickens, it is eggs and meat.
For honeybees, it involves honey, beeswax, and the pollination of crops.
Even though we call it livestock farming, there is truly a diverse range of jobs within it.
The work of growing plants is much broader than that.
So, what about plants?
Grains like rice and wheat.
Vegetables like tomatoes and cucumbers.
Fruit trees like apples and mandarin oranges.
Flowers, seeds and seedlings, tea, cotton, hemp, and rushes.
When you list them all like this, it becomes clear that agriculture is not simply the work of producing food.
Cotton and hemp become raw materials for clothing.
Rushes become tatami mats.
Flowers are grown for ornamental purposes.
There is also the work of producing seeds and seedlings themselves as products.
Even with the same plants, the nature of the work differs completely depending on what is being sold.
And even when cultivating the same tomato, the management structure changes between open-field cultivation and facility cultivation, soil cultivation and hydroponics, and summer-autumn cultivation and winter-spring cultivation.
If the variety is different, the required cultivation management is also different.
If the sales destination is different, even the harvesting methods and sorting standards change.
Even the category of ‘tomato farmer’ is actually quite broad.
Incidentally, mushrooms are sometimes discussed as agricultural production activities in a broad sense. However, in Japan’s industrial classification, cultivated mushrooms are sometimes classified under forestry.
This ambiguity of boundaries is also an interesting aspect of classification.
The category of ‘primary industry’
Agriculture is generally classified as a primary industry.
Along with forestry and fisheries, it is an industry that produces goods by utilizing natural resources.
As a classification, this is understandable.
However, let’s consider cotton, for example.
Growing cotton is a primary industry.
Turning cotton into thread and weaving it into fabric is a secondary industry.
Selling clothing is a tertiary industry.
The process from the product reaching the consumer is divided by industrial classification.
However, in the first place, without cotton, the textile industry that uses that cotton as a raw material cannot begin.
Of course, without processing and distribution, the value of cotton cannot be fully realized.
It is not a question of which is superior.
Only when each is connected does it function as a single industry.
Nevertheless, I feel uncomfortable with isolating agriculture and evaluating it all together.
Agriculture is not a single business model.
Within agriculture, there are businesses that ship daily, and others that focus on a single harvest per year.
There are crops that can be harvested in a few months, and fruit trees that require waiting years after planting.
Some require expensive facilities, while others require vast amounts of land.
There are labor-intensive operations, and others that are easily mechanized.
Can things with such different conditions be measured by the same yardstick?
If you say ‘agriculture is not profitable,’ then which crop, at what scale, and what kind of management are you referring to?
If you say ‘agriculture has low productivity,’ then what are you investing, and what are you measuring as the result?
It is difficult to talk about agriculture as a whole without looking at what it actually entails.
First, I want to increase the resolution of our understanding of agriculture.
I do not want agriculture to be unconditionally praised.
There are areas that need to be improved from a management perspective.
Technological innovation is also necessary.
There is still plenty of room to review inefficient tasks.
That is precisely why I do not want it to be lumped together.
If the content of agriculture differs, the challenges differ as well.
If the challenges are different, the necessary technology, policies, and management decisions should also be different.
The same can be said for the use of AI.
The same system is not useful for every agricultural business.
It starts with understanding what we are producing, where we are spending our time and money, and what we want to improve.
It begins with understanding those points.
I do not want agriculture to be treated specially. I want agriculture to be evaluated correctly.
To that end, I think we first need to look a little more carefully at what the word ‘agriculture’ actually contains.
And, what role has such diverse agriculture played in human society in the first place?
Next time, I would like to look back a little into history to consider this.
