The Organic Vegetable Cultivation Techniques and Sales Strategy in Large-scale Vegetable Farming: Case Study of Organic Onion Cultivation by Shinshinotsu Tsuchikara Nojo, Corp.

Abstract

While efforts to achieve the SDGs are underway in Japan and overseas, The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan has set a target of increasing the ratio of organic farming to 25% of arable land area by 2050. By expanding the area of organic farming, it is expected to reduce the environmental burden by reducing the use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers. In order to expand the area of organic farming, it is important to increase the area of organic farming per farm, and for this purpose, it is important to clarify the actual conditions of large-scale organic farming, and to consider effective technology development and support measures. So, we clarified some factors related to the establishment of large-scale organic cultivation by analyzing the technical and managerial efforts of a farm that conducts large-scale organic onion cultivation in Hokkaido. As a result, the following were mainly found. 1) The farm strives to carry out labor-saving cultivation and employs temporary workers for weeding, 2) owns facilities for product sorting and quality control, 3) builds the cultivation techniques considering the balance between yield, quality, and labor-saving. Based on these results, we suggested challenges such as the development of labor-saving weeding technology, and support for the sale of organic agricultural products.