A Narrative Analysis on the Learning of Succession-Type Young Farmers in a Farming Community of Practice

Young farmers play an important role in maintaining and developing agriculture due to the decline in the farming population. Accordingly, the government is implementing policies to support young farmers to foster agricultural manpower, but they are mainly focused on entrepreneurship. Beyond the simple target of support policies, we need to pay attention to the fact that succession farmers are successors to the family business. This is because the experience of farming situations from childhood to the present plays an important role in the process of succession farmers succeeding their family business. We conducted a narrative study to examine how their farming experience affects their participation in farming practice communities and how they grow from legitimate peripheral participants to full participants through experiences in farming practice communities. The results of the study showed that the farming activities that the research participants experienced ‘just like that’ and ‘naturally’ during their growth process were naturally embodied in them and ultimately influenced their agricultural succession. The senses accumulated through experience in the farming spaces such as rice paddies, fields, and livestock sheds were then realized as skills through practical actions in the farming activities of the successor farmers, resulting in learning experiences. In addition, they were able to confirm changes in their identity in the process of moving from the periphery to the center outside the community boundaries through practice. They are finding their identity and growing as agricultural managers through continuous interaction and practice with their families, who are members of the farming practice community.