一本教会你“做对”题的6级阅读书 day8 passage5
Passage 5 Young Japanese Are Back to the Farm
日本年轻人返回农村 《时代周刊》
Tatsunori Kobayashi is part of Japan's 2,400-strong Rural Labor Squad,
urban trainees dispatched to the countryside under a pilot program
to put Japan's underemployed youth to cultivate its farms.
Started last month as part of Prime Minister Taro Aso's stimulus plans,
the program stems from growing concern about
both the plight of Japan's younger workers and the dismal state of farms.
The predicament of Japanese in their 20s and 30s dates back
to the lost decade of the 1990s, when many failed to find good,
stable work. Today, a disproportionate number endure low-wage jobs
a potential portent for America's students and first-time job seekers
plunging into a shallow job market in the United States.
[01:04]As the Japanese recession has worsened,
[01:07]younger workers have taken the brunt of wage cuts and layoffs,
[01:12]especially in manufacturing.
[01:15]Now the government views the slump Japanese exports fell almost 50 percent
[01:21]year-to-year in February as a chance to divert idle labor to sectors
[01:27]that have long suffered from worker shortages, like agriculture.
[01:33]Many young Japanese, for their part,
[01:36]have shown a growing interest in farming
[01:39]as disillusionment rises over the grind of city jobs and layoffs.
[01:45]Agricultural job fairs have been swamped with hundreds of applicants;
[01:51]one in Osaka attracted 1,400 people.
[01:56]Whether it will save Japan's deteriorating economy is something else.
[02:02]"Rural communities could benefit from an influx of young people,"
[02:07]said Masashi Umemoto at the National Agricultural Research Center.
[02:14]"But it's unrealistic to look to agriculture
[02:17]as a solution to the country's unemployment problems."
[02:22]Like the French and the British, whose industrial societies have deep
[02:27](if distant) rural roots,
[02:30]the Japanese have long romanticized life in the countryside.
[02:36]Only 4 percent of Japan's labor force works in agriculture,
[02:41]but a reverence for the country's rice-farming heritage is strong.
[02:47]Japanese children grow up with warnings not to waste a single grain of rice,
[02:54]out of respect for farmers' labor. And in international trade talks,
[03:00]rice remains the most sensitive crop for Japan.
[03:05]Beneath this romanticism, however, is a stark reality.
[03:10]Japanese farming is a picture of inefficiency,
[03:15]and the rural work force is graying.
[03:19]A decline in rice prices has hit farms hard only the largest farms
[03:25]still turn a profit from harvesting rice, forcing farmers to take on extra jobs.
[03:32]The farms most desperate for workers
[03:35]do not have the means to pay for new recruits.
[03:39]Agricultural jobs pay as little as $1,500 a month and are often seasonal.