We have been interested in how foreign workers in agriculture are viewed by their employers, their handlers, and the communities where they reside. We wanted to know how stakeholders were utilizing the new Specified Skilled Worker (SSW) system being put in place from 2019, and how they were coordinating the new system with the existing system of TITP. Ultimately, we hoped to better understand the place of foreign workers in Japan’s agriculture, which is facing a severe demographic decline that threatens Japan’s food security. Over 3 years we visited poultry, dairy, vegetable, fruit, and cut flower farms multiple times, in Aichi and Kyoto prefectures, as well as the construction business owners. From these employers, we learned that foreign labor power is necessary to all phases of production. While they are willing to mechanize to an extent, many jobs need human hands to accomplish. The farmers in our study saw foreign workers as extremely valuable.
