Abstract
This paper has two purposes. One is to delineate the boundary of Tokyo metropolitan milkshed by applying the method of areal functional organization to dairy industry and the other is to classify the whole area of this milkshed into dairy regions according to the areal differences of milk gathering systems.
The fluid milk from dairy farms flows to milk gathering sheds with bulk coolers, cooler (cold) stations and milk processing plants in Tokyo in the successive order. The milk gathering sheds as the lower-order central establishments serve dairy farms which constitute the lowest and basic functional units in the first order milkshed. The cooler stations serve the milk gather-ing sheds in the second order milkshed and the Tokyo milk processing plants serve, in turn, the cooler stations as the third order milkshed. Dairy product companies each of which con-trols several milk processing plants constitutes the area of fourth order milkshed. The dairy product companies constitute in aggregate the fifth order milkshed : i. e. the Tokyo metropolitan milkshed. Milk gathering system in the Tokyo metropolitan milkshed indicates the following hierarchical structure.
This structure shows that the vertical integration of dairy farms is taking place by mono-polistic dairy product companies. These milksheds as the regional pattern of dairy farming indicate that the dairy regions are brought under the control of milk processing capital, espe-cially after 1955.
The author classified the area of Tokyo metropolitan milkshed into three dairy regions from the viewpoint of areal differences of milk gathering system. These regions classified form a concentric arrangement as a whole and each of them has the following characteristics.
The first (inner) dairy region is the sphere in which milk is carried directly to the milk processing plants in Tokyo taking the advantage of the location close to the Tokyo urbanized area. There are many milk processing plants and specialized suburban dairy farms as in Yachiyo-shi. The second dairy region is characterized by the existence of many cooler stations which gather 5, 000kg of milk or less per day as in the northwestern part of Saitama Prefecture. The dairy farmers who mostly keep more than 10 dairy cows transport their milk to these cooler stations by their own trucks. The third (outer) dairy region in Tokyo metropolitan milkshed is the largest in area and supplies the largest amount of milk among these regions. This region is characterized by the normal milk gathering system : fluid milk bottled by milk processing plants in Tokyo is gathered from the dairy farms through the milk gathering sheds and cooler stations.
The spatial structure of the dairy regions is dependent greatly on the accesibility to the milk processing plants in Tokyo on one side and the perishable character of fluid milk on the other. The size of dairy cattle herds deminishes as the distance from Tokyo increases.
