Responding to an aging society, strengthening rural environmental protection and remediation

The phenomenon of an aging society is already a shared problem among advanced countries worldwide. Under the trend of declining birthrates and high-quality medical care, fewer newborns are born while elderly people live longer, which inevitably sets a nation on the path to aging.

But does population aging necessarily mean a nation must come down with "gerontophobia"? This may well be a national myth, or even a case of misguided policy.

Among these issues, the disintegration of rural areas intensifies the problems of an aging society.

 

The social problems of aging point straight to the core issues of production and care: that is, when a country's productive population shrinks while the population needing care grows, it ends up spending more than it earns, to the point where national finances could collapse. This "Lewis Turning Point," where surplus labor turns into a labor shortage, has long shaped the direction of global population research.

But the decline in productivity under aging is not a personal problem of the elderly; it is a problem of the retirement system, and even of the structure of work. After all, people over 65 today generally maintain decent physical condition and work capacity, yet the burden of pensions forces them to leave the workplace. Even if they are capable of working in old age, cities offer no suitable jobs for them to take.

This phenomenon of being "old and useless" in fact conceals the ageist mentality of an unfriendly society.

But when these issues reach rural areas, the picture is entirely different. In rural societies that have already entered aging early, many farming people are over 65. Farmers will even tell you that in the countryside, 40 counts as a youngster, 50 counts as a youth, 60 is the early middle-aged, 70 is the late middle-aged, only at 80 do you count as old, and only at 90 can you retire.

"Working until old" in the countryside may be a sorrowful fate, but seen from another angle, it means never retiring from life, creating labor value or seeking self-meaning through work.

In Japan, the social problems of aging are just as severe, but responses were launched early on. Among them, the 2000 "Basic Law on Food, Agriculture and Rural Areas" proposed measures to promote the activities of elderly farmers: "In line with the role-sharing of elderly farmers and the skills and abilities they possess, promote agricultural management activities with meaning for life and improvements to the related environment, and enhance welfare measures for elderly farmers."

Such rural preparation in response to aging is of course not about turning rural areas into labor camps, locking old people in to work until they die, but about developing a rural environment suited to the work of elderly farmers through improvements in farming practices and agricultural technology.

In farming, the first step is crop selection: guiding aging rural communities to grow crops that are easy to tend and manage, easy-to-care-for rice, wheat, and legumes, or fruit trees suited to grassy growth. There is even promotion of matching crops to the right site, growing crops in natural environments without excessive, complicated additive techniques. Next comes the development of farm machinery, designing not only to save labor but also simple operating tools suited to the elderly.

Second, beyond farm production, there is thinking about expanding the field of agricultural processing. Because Japan is a country accustomed to eating pickled foods, pickling is farm processing work that is not heavy but requires time and patience, quite suitable for the elderly. Some pickled products even carry the warm slogan "Aging together with me."

In addition, beyond simplifying farm work, there is the upgrading of agricultural skills. The most familiar example is "master farming."

This term "master," which rose to prominence over 20 years, refers to "a person who, through long years of training and accumulated rich experience, has grasped the true essence of a certain field." Introducing master farming into rural areas is an affirmation of long-time farming people. Beyond the psychological respect it brings, the "exquisite goods" produced by master farmers can also fetch better prices.

 

On the other hand, rural masters do not refer only to farming techniques. Many masters of traditional crafts or culture who are deeply versed in rural life are important cultural assets in the countryside. Many rural areas moving toward deep tourism must rely on these cultural masters and history masters to come forward and help. This is also why rural communities, in self-deprecation, say that of those pushing community development and homeland guardianship, as many as 80 percent are elderly, creating a situation of the elderly saving the countryside.

The promotion of production in old age has a long tradition and foundation in rural areas, and even an ancient operating logic. Modern society destroys and disdains rural areas; helpers need only create new methods and attitudes in farming and agricultural technology to extend a new spring of elderly farmers' reproduction in the countryside.

In global urban-rural development, the countryside is widely recognized as the place best suited for the elderly to live. Beyond having suitable space for living, in psychological care the environment is in fact much friendlier than the city.

For the care of the rural elderly, the work in old age described above in fact solves a large part of the problem of loneliness among the elderly. Take Japan's "Hundred-Year Grass" elderly welfare institution as an example: it opens an elderly factory in the countryside, letting the elderly go in to work, from making bread to curing bacon. With the stubborn persistence of the elderly, they produce uniquely flavored delicacies. For those elderly who cannot move or are tired of working, having retired from their life's workplace, a "day care center" is set up right beside it, letting all the elderly gather together to chat, walk, and eat together, while care staff can look after them and provide medical care from the side.

If we go one level higher, it is about attracting young people to return through upgrading rural industries. Because when young people return, whether to continue farming or to run a small shop or homestay at home, they in fact restore the early family care function of "three generations under one roof." Even today, with improved national welfare, the elderly need not rely on their children for support, but the loneliness in their hearts cannot be replaced by money.

So in Japan's "environmental rural development," what matters is making the countryside a livable space for the elderly. Being livable means not only that the local elderly can live at ease and move about conveniently, but more importantly that it also suits elderly people from elsewhere to come and live at ease and move about conveniently. In Japan, it has been found that in the distribution of domestic tourism, people over 60 make up as much as 30 percent and are even climbing steadily, and it is globally recognized that the Japanese countryside is the place best suited for the elderly to live.

So when traveling in the Japanese countryside, you can find some heartwarming designs: chairs to sit and rest on everywhere, gently designed steps, food suited to the elderly, and spaces full of nostalgia, and even the grandmother of the house coming out to receive elderly tourists. These designs that win over the psychology of aging tourists may be called commercial considerations, but in fact they contain too much of the delicate feeling of preparing the countryside for the elderly of one's own community. When the environment suits the local elderly, it naturally also attracts elderly tourists from elsewhere.

In Taiwan, China, after the 921 earthquake, many reconstruction teams that moved in began to care about the problems of the rural elderly. Leng Shang-shu of Lugu, from the Qingshuigou workstation to the Qingshui teahouse, arranged for the elderly to gather and eat at the workstation, and also delivered boxed lunches for ten years to the elderly with limited mobility. Feng Xiao-fei of Zhongliao, from Longyanlin to Xidiyiao and then to the newsmarket, visited village after village across rural Taiwan, seeking out agricultural masters to find traditional good flavors. Even today, with the young people into the countryside promoted by the agrarian movement, rediscovering the value of the countryside and rebuilding a livable environment, many groups are working hard for the countryside.

As for the government, elderly welfare is too heavily focused on cities, yet it forgets that the countryside has a foundation suited to elderly life. Ensuring the countryside's existence and strengthening assistance such as medical care and environmental creation can yield twice the result with half the effort. This is also why many rural elderly are unwilling to go to the city, and why many urban elderly keep returning to the countryside.

But the worst thing is that while the international community has begun to pay attention to the role of rural areas in rescuing and transforming an aging society, Taiwan, China is destroying one rural area after another through land expropriation. In fact, those hit most directly are the elderly living in the countryside. The government's violent expropriation has not built living spaces for more elderly people; it has even forced elderly people who once lived in peace to leave their hometowns and wander from place to place only in old age.

In China, more than 30 years of development and forced relocation have destroyed countless rural areas, creating millions of "drifting elderly" forced into cities. Locals describe this group of elderly who have left their hometowns with the saying "One lock when you leave the door, one lamp when you enter, two legs kicked up when the door closes, no sound of crying when the door opens", depicting the miserable state of the elderly who have left their hometowns.

When aging society has been discussed for decades, what should have been done was not done, and only now is it being elevated to national security level. After a pile of slogans and policy decrees, the most urgent thing is to stop destroying rural areas and forcibly relocating farmers. Do not let a rural space that can offer "usefulness in old age and a proper end in old age" be destroyed in the hands of politicians who are all old themselves yet least respectful of the elderly.

An aging society is not terrifying. What is terrifying is what policies and thinking make the problem more complicated and more severe. So to save an aging society, stop firing off empty talk and save the countryside that is livable for the elderly first!