Photo/Illutration A farmer in Gunma Prefecture harvests eggplants in summer. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

Farmers out in their fields and greenhouses all day are being urged by the agriculture ministry to remain vigilant against extreme heat after 2,013 were treated at hospitals for heatstroke between May and September last year, the highest number in five years.

The ministry is calling on local governments and agricultural cooperatives to provide training to help farmers protect themselves against heatstroke. It has designated May through July as the intensive period for providing such training.

Ministry officials for the first time prepared a textbook explaining heatstroke symptoms and countermeasures for training purposes.

Officials said 29 farmers died of heatstroke in 2022, accounting for 12.2 percent of all fatal accidents that occurred during agricultural work, up from 6 percent in 2012.

The percentage fluctuated from year to year but was generally on the rise over the decade, ministry officials said.

This summer, several people died apparently after suffering heatstroke during agricultural work in Ehime and Fukuoka prefectures and elsewhere.

Every year, 80 percent of farmers’ deaths from heatstroke occur in July and August, and those in their 70s or older have accounted for nearly 90 percent of fatalities.

The agriculture ministry said many farmers are one-person operations, and thus run the risk of not being found quickly if they keel over from heatstroke.

In some cases, farmers did not return home after going out alone to work in the heat, and worried family members found them collapsed when they went to check up on them.

Seventy percent of 1.11 million “people mainly engaged in farming” are aged 65 or older, according to a preliminary agriculture ministry report for 2024.

In Okayama Prefecture, a division of tomato growers under the JA Harenokuni Okayama, an association of agricultural cooperatives, has been promoting the use of work clothes fitted with small fans to cool workers for the past several years.

The division subsidized half of the roughly 30,000 yen ($190) cost, and all the division’s 40 or so members have purchased the outfits.

In the harvesting season that starts in mid-July, temperatures in greenhouses can reach a scorching 45 degrees.

The average age of the division’s tomato growers is around 65, and many have fallen ill in high summer in recent years.

Yuko Kamimura, who serves as industrial doctor for the JA Yamagata-shi in Yamagata, said the farmers’ working environment is becoming increasingly severe each summer.

Kamimura said farmers traditionally have fewer opportunities to learn about heatstroke risks compared with construction workers or about specific measures to prevent heat-related illness tailored to their individual working conditions.

“Climate change and the aging of the farming population both make it dangerous to think they should be safe this year because they were OK last year,” Kamimura said.

Related News