Economy of 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 56,000 km² (14 million acres) cultivated.
Women in science
Women remain very much a minority in Japanese science (15% in 2013), although the situation has improved slightly (13% in 2008) since the government fixed a target in 2006 of raising the ratio of female researchers to 25%. Calculated on the basis of the current number of doctoral students, the government hopes to obtain a 20% share of women in science, 15% in engineering and 30% in agriculture and health by the end of the current "Basic Plan for Science and Technology" in 2016. In 2013, Japanese female researchers were most common in the public sector in health and agriculture, where they represented 29% of academics and 20% of government researchers. In the business sector, just 8% of researchers were women (in head counts), compared to 25% in the academic sector. In other public research institutions, women accounted for 16% of researchers. One of the main thrusts of Abenomics, Japan's current growth strategy, is to enhance the socio-economic role of women. Consequently, the selection criteria for most large university grants now take into account the proportion of women among teaching staff and researchers.