Japanese Immigration and agriculture: emphasis on japanese immigration and their Descendants in Assaí Municipality – PR.

Abstract

This article is a result about the study realized in Assaí – PR, in 2008, during EXPOASA, agricultural exposition hall, with 33 interviewers, Japanese immigrants and descendants of them to verify the Japanese immigration process to Brazil and also to analyze how they get earth, especially in Paraná North, in Assaí, besides analyze how crops they choose to plant. By money economies in coffee farms in São Paulo, Japanese were buying earths in Assaí and they started to plant coffee. The cotton also was an option of crop, mainly in 1930, but then, it lost importance because of economic and climatic problems, on 1980 decade. Coffee also was a profitable crop in some decades, but nowadays the interviewers said that corn, wheat, sugar cane and soy are easier to plant because they don´t need diary handling, although they need large areas to plant them. The interviewers also had interest in plant and sell fruits and vegetables, but their low prices in moment of sell discouraged them, and because of this they choose commodities. Coffe is still cultivated in some farms but only as a remembering family, said some Japanese interviewers, because de price is slow yet.