Japan
The Japanese agricultural sector accounts for about 1.4% of the total country's GDP. Only 12% of Japan's land is suitable for cultivation. Due to this lack of arable land, a system of terraces is used to farm in small areas. This results in one of the world's highest levels of crop yields per unit area, with an overall agricultural self-sufficiency rate of about 50% on fewer than cultivated.
Tenant farmer
In Japan, landowners turned over their land to families of tenant farmers to manage. During the Meiji period, Japanese tenant farmers were traditionally cultivators rather than capitalistic or entrepreneurial venture by nature, paid in kind for their labors. Approximately 30% of land was held by tenants. Many aspects of Tokugawa feudalism continued. After WWII, the Farm Land Reform Law of 1946 banned absentee landlordism, re-distributing land and permitted tenants to buy. By the 1950s, it virtually eliminated the landlord-tenant relationship.