2007 Volume 16 Issue 2 Pages 47-57
In Toyomatsu Village, its agriculture production has tended to specialized in tomato production, which is a typical example of vegetable production fields in intermediate and mountainous area, Chugoku area. These vegetable production fields have suffered from an increasing percentage of aging farmers. Although they introduce labor saving technology and supporting system for farming activities, the scale of production has been decreased. Tomato production in Toyomatsu shows the same tendency. However, tomato farming has other problems as regards labor, beside the increasing number of aging farmers. Successors of tomato producers, regardless of whether or not they live together with them, are familiar with rice producing technology, but not be trained with tomato producing technology. Those successors who engage in non-agriculture activities have little vision about the family business of their households, so that the producers tend to decide to cease tomato production. Therefore, sustainable development of vegetable production may require a system of transferring producing technology to any conceivable successors, including new comers and farmers having retired from outside-faming activities. This is because they will possibly grow up to play an important role in vegetable (and tomato) production. It is necessary for vegetable producing areas to keep a certain scale of production in order to make such a system work effectively.
