J3 Club FC Gifu Partners with 82Works to Solve Agricultural Issues in Hilly and Mountainous Areas

82Works Co., Ltd. (Otsuki City, Yamanashi; CEO Yuya Hayashi) has announced a partnership with Gifu Football Club Co., Ltd. (Gifu City, Gifu; CEO Hiroshi Komatsu, hereinafter 'FC Gifu') to launch the 'GREEN FIELD PROJECT' in Ibigawa Town, Gifu. This project is not merely agricultural support but a collective effort by 'Corporations, Sports, and Community' to create a 'system' for sustainable involvement in challenging hilly and mountainous areas. This initiative will be implemented by Ibigawa Farm Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of 82Works, with subsidies from Gifu Prefecture's 'Agripark Priority Promotion Model Implementation Project.'

About the First Initiative We will continuously hold exchange events for FC Gifu fans and supporters. Date and Time: Sunday, May 24, 2026, 14:00–16:30 (Meeting at 13:45) Venue: 429 Tanigumitari, Ibigawa-cho, Ibi-gun, Gifu 501-1315, and nearby farmlands. Details: https://www.fc-gifu.com/news_information/166413.html

Background of the Initiative 'Creating companions who stay involved even with weak ties, rather than just discovering one powerful successor.' Japanese agriculture faces structural issues like aging, shortage of successors, and increasing abandoned farmland. These impacts are particularly severe in hilly and mountainous areas. Both 82Works' production base in Otsuki, Yamanashi, and Ibigawa Farm's base in Ibigawa, Gifu, are located in such areas, and our group has faced these challenges on the ground.

In hilly areas, factors like sunlight constraints due to terrain, decreased work efficiency from fragmented fields, and unstable yields from wildlife damage overlap, creating an industry structure where risks are high and reproducibility is difficult. This makes it hard to ensure stable profitability and leads to the decrease of successors. This structure also results in people leaving and creates a situation where continuous involvement is difficult. We believe that for such structural issues, we need to design a system premised on continuous involvement rather than just simple problem-solving.

Essence of the Initiative This project aims to realize sustainable involvement through the design of relationships, rather than relying on single indicators like productivity or profitability. Due to geographical constraints and natural conditions, it is difficult to solve issues in hilly areas only through short-term efficiency improvements. Therefore, creating and maintaining subjects who stay involved continuously is crucial. By building a system where companies, sports clubs, and regions can stay involved according to their purposes and values, we aim to form non-transient relationships and realize sustainable regional involvement and the creation of 'relationship populations.'

Through this initiative, we aim to expand agriculture in hilly and mountainous areas from 'production activities' to 'value creation activities based on relationships' and establish it as a sustainable business model.