Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the backgorund, problems and prospects of Agricultural Corporation set up by municipal government, which is expected as a new form of the farm management in recent years.
The outline of this paper is as follows.
(1) In Japanese agriculture, especially in mountainous areas, successors of farm households tend to work in cities, leaving very unproductive farmers behind in their home towns. This results in lower agricultural productivity by farm household. Land has rapidly eroded, and in some regions, even rural community is hard to be maintained. Group farming set up to meet the situation does not function effectively because of aging of the members.
(2) As a countermeasure to cope with these problems, the Agricutual Public Corporation (APC) system was adopted at the municipal lebel in May, 1992. This system enables the Corporation to cultivate the lands temporarily on behalf of the land owners who have no farmers.
(3) This APC has such function to maintain arable lands and to promote agricultural production in surrounding areas.
(4) However, APC has faced to some problems yet to be solved. For example, with respect to agricultural production, APC needs to coordinate with family farms. Moreover, as regards agricultural promotion, APC must act in concert with agricultural cooperatives. Without overcoming these difficulties, there is no hope for APC to succeed in mountainous areas.
