THE CLASS DIFFERENTIATION OF FARMERS AND CONVERSION OF LAND USE IN THE KUROME RIVER BASIN IN NIIZA CITY, SAITAMA PREFECTURE

Abstract

With the concentration of population in cities in 1960's, there have been drastic but chaotic conversions of agricultural land to urban uses in the suburban areas. This trend brought about the destruction of traditional functions of paddy fields, upland feuds, and coppices, which prevented the occurrence of floods, and the area has come to suffer from a flood even with a small rain shower.In this paper, the writer studies the class differentiation of farmers in relation to conversion of land and ownership in the Kurome River Basin, Niiza City, Saitama Prefecture. This area is often inundated with water.
As a result of my interview investigation of twenty farmers in the district of Horinouchi, where the Kurome River has frequently overflowed, the following tendencies were recognized:
1) The area subject to flood, has extended year by year. But farmhouses did not suffer from a flood because they were on a little higher grounds.
2) The conversion of the land use in this area caused the frequent floods but there seems to be a background that the farmers are less concerned about the water and irrigation canals they have been using, as they tend to specialize in producing only vegetables.
3) The buyers of the farmland are mainly these three: public enterprises, real estate sub-dividers, and individuals. The public works such as municipal roads and Kan-Etsu Expressway construction, and river conservation made the land price high and led to the con-version of farmland. Since 1967, the parcels of paddy fields which they had been frequently flooded, were converted into subdivisions. Since early 1960's individuals who wanted residential lots have bought many but small parcels where open field vegetables such as carrots were cultivated.
4) The farmers that obtained funds from disposing their farmlands and reinvested in agricultural sectors such as carrot production and hog raising made themselves owner farmers. But, the farmers that spent the funds on their living or rental houses construction turned to be part time farmers who cultivate vegetables for their own consumption.
In this district where farmers have given up rice production and tend to specializein vegetables like carrots, as the urbanization is sprawling, the class differentiation of farmers is determined by both the type of disposal of farmlands (such as its time, scope, destination, and price) and the number of family members engaging in farming. This class differentiation is transitional and it will be surely intensified by the circumstances that are getting worse for agriculture.