善光寺平におけるリンゴ地帯の形成について
1958 年 31 巻 3 号 p. 142-152
詳細
1958 年 31 巻 3 号 p. 142-152
(1) In the Nagano Basin (Zenkoji-daira), apple were first grown for trial in around 1879, and widely cultivated in all parts of the basin at the beginning of the 20th century. Unlike those grown in Aomori prefecture, however, they could prove no dominant commercial crop.
In around 1918, as the cultivating technique was improved, the apple-growing industry was gradually expanding in the diluvial upland on the western edge of the basin and on the natural levees of River Chikuma, where apple-cultivation possesses relatively superior condition to sericulture.
After the economic crisis of 1930, making a nucleus of the existing apple-culivation on a small scale, it had developed to a certain extent in the whole basin, thus the apples produced here came to be a commercial farm product in place of that by sericulture.
After the war, they have become the most dominant commercial crop in the baein, and now it ranks second to Tsugaru Plain as an important apple-growing area in Japan.
(2) It is clear that 80% of the apple-production in Nagano prefecture is concentrated in the Nagano Basin because of its physical condition to fit apple-growing and its geographical situation near the markets. What is more, however, the principal conditions that enables the apple-growing to expand so rapidly are the high productivity traditionally fostered by engaging in commercial agriculture since old times, the cooperative producing organization and the cheap labors richly supplied from the surrounding mountain villages.
(3) The apple is a most refined commercial crop, and its cultivation is controlled by physical and social conditons, so that the apple-growing in this basin has not evenly developed.
The principal growing areas are the diluvial upland on the western edge of the basin, the natural levees of River Chikuma and the diluvial upland in the northern part and the fans in the eastern part, where the apples are grown as the main crops. In the other areas, however, farmers grow them as a plural management or a sideline while they engage in sericulture together with raising of rice, wheat, vegetables, flowers, tobacco and hops.
