but, says geographer latz, there are bigger changes in store. manufacturing employment opportunities in rural areas is increasing. so someone can become a part-time farmer, maintain the agricultural farm household, but the head of the house would commute each day to a chip-manufacturing facility or some other manufacturing facility that's high-tech oriented and earn an income there, but still be classified as a farm household. one of the fascinating things about the case is the age of the farmers' profiles. you see almost no young people there. 26%, 28% of the agricultural population in japan is over 65 years old in the year 2000, and this has been increasing steadily over the last decade. meanwhile, the number of young people going into agriculture is relatively static, so you're having a rapid decline of the agricultural population. japan's desire to be self-sufficient in certain agricultural crops, meanwhile, will not change. narrator: an aging population and part-time farmers will require a transformation of rice farming in japan during the