What is the difference between American & Japanese farming? ~ Alaskan Farming

Hello!

Welcome back to Agri Step!

I would like to write some basic information about “what the Alaskan agriculture looks like”.

I write about the topics that caught my attention.

What are the major industries in Alaska?

First, I summarize the major industries in Alaska.

Most people probably know that Alaska is a major oil producing state.

Approximately 85% of the state’s budget is generated by the oil and gas industry, and a significant amount of oil is transported through the Trans Alaska Pipeline every day.

That’s approximately 1.8 million barrels of oil per day, transported through 800 miles of pipeline.

Because it is such a large industry, it is definitely Alaska’s top industry, but other important industries include travel, fishing, forestry, minerals and coal, and agriculture.

I won’t mention the Trans Alaska Pipeline too much in my article, but if you are interested, you can learn more about the history of it and what makes it unique from the following website.

What is the scale of agriculture in Alaska’s industrial structure?

Let’s take a look at numbers.

Agriculture in Alaska

Agriculture is considered an important industry in Alaska, but how big is it?

Based on data from USDA’s National agricultural statistic service, we compared Alaska to other states in terms of the number of farmers and the size of their operations.

The results are as follows.

• Alaska has the fewest number of farms in the United States.
• The size of farms is also quite small when compared to most of the other states.
• However, the average farm size per farmer is in the top tier of farms in the U.S.

Alaska has the lowest number of farms in the U.S.?

The 2019 USDA data report shows that Alaska has the lowest number of farms in the United States.

Many of Alaska’s small native communities have been specializing in hunting, fishing, and other food gathering activities that are suited to Alaska’s natural environment for a long time.

This cultural background, however, has gradually led to a social structure that relies more and more on food imports.

As a result, the number of farms has been on the rise, and when I cross-reference my research with Iowa State University data, the number of farms has doubled over the past 70 years, from 525 in 1950 to 1,050 in 2019.

By the way, the number of farms in Japan has decreased from 6.17 million in 1950 to 1.07 million in 2020.

I found out something very interesting about the number of farms from Iowa State University’s data.

The number of farmers in most states is declining except for a few states like Alaska.

From this link, we can see that Alaska’s agriculture is unique for foreigners and domestic people.

Farm size in Alaska

The total area of arable land in Alaska is 850,000 acres (about 340,000 hectares), which is very small compared to other large states in the US.

Japan also has 4,349,000 hectares, so in terms of arable land area, it is larger than Alaska’s.

However, it would be very different if we talk about the area owned by each farmer.

On average, each farmer in Alaska owns 850 acres (about 34 hectares) of land.

This is a higher ranking than the average for farmers in other U.S. states.

In Japan, the average is 1.4 hectares, so you can see how different it is!

How is the life of Alaskan farmers?

I would love to talk with farmers about their lives in Alaska, but for this article, I only talk about a few things that caught my attention during my research! (Because I had never been to Alaska when I wrote this article in JP.)

The USDA has a website that gives a brief summary of Alaskan agriculture.

As introduced on this site, farmers in Alaska are raising fruits, vegetables, grains, lawns, and plants. They are also doing aquaculture, growing seaweed!

While the growing season is expected to lengthen as a result of higher temperatures due to climate change, the number of pests and animal damage are also on the rise.

In addition, watching videos of farmers growing vegetables in greenhouses, I learned that the temperature inside the greenhouses has risen to 80-90℉ (around 32℃).

Moreover, there is the Alaska State Fair, which is an annual competition to compare the size of the crops.

Scroll down to the article above to see a large photo of some vegetables.

You can also check Instagram and other sites to see the same big veggies.

Conclusion

In this article, I have shared with you what I found out about the industries in Alaska.

I compared the industrial structure of agriculture in Alaska to other states in the U.S., and to Japan.

I think I was able to make a very interesting analysis, as the way of looking at some different data.

You can see photos of my Alaska trip on Agri Step’s Insta account.

Tap the photo below to go to the insta page.

Thank you for your continuing support.

See you in the next article!