Rural economic revitalization in Japan through 'economic gardening'

The 'Economic Gardening' is a practical approach for local economic development first employed in Littleton, Colorado, USA in 1989. The approach emphasizes on economic development efforts on investing in local businesses rather than traditional approach of attracting big firms to the local community by offering incentives and tax breaks. The Economic Gardening program focuses on providing market information for local business to increase their competitiveness and the probability of success. Another pillar of the program is paying attention to infrastructure to create a city where entrepreneurs want to live and people want to do businesses. The third emphasis is to build connections among the businesses in the city by facilitating industry clusters and cross-marketing opportunities, and strengthening connections between industry and the higher education sector. Ohgata Village in Akita Prefecture, one of the rural municipalities in Japan, has been employing similar strategy to the Economic Gardening. Having highly specialized in rice production, the village promoted a 'produced locally, consumed locally' policy, public-private partnership in agriculture, developed infrastructure, and initiated internship and entrepreneurship programs in cooperation with personnel service firms in Tokyo. This is an innovative approach in rural Akita, where it is recognized as the least entrepreneurial in Japan.