Japan will offer workers from overseas on-the-job training in processing agricultural goods, seeking to relieve a labour shortage for employers that increasingly handle aspects of the farming business beyond producing.
Previously, such foreign trainees were limited to farm work, but now they will be allowed to handle the likes of pre-cut vegetable among others.
The labour, justice and agriculture ministries will revise the national training system, which offers technical and informational instruction to workers from emerging economies and elsewhere. The training program employed some 210,000 people as of last autumn, of which about 20,000 worked in agriculture.
Farming cooperatives will be allowed to contract with foreign workers and to train them in facilities -- such as fruit-sorting centres -- operated by the central Japan Agricultural Cooperatives group.
Source: asia.nikkei.com
