THE REGIONAL DISTRIBUTION OF COMPARATIVELY LARGE FARMS IN JAPAN

Abstract

The typical Japanese farm is commonly thought to be very small and intensively cultivated. This image is quite true, but Japan does have another type of farming based on comparatively larger units of acreage. Though the number of these farms is small at present, it has been increasing year by year.
This article has two purposes: the first is to present the regional distribution of large farms in Japan, and the second is to explain clearly the regional structure of land use management. The data for farm size by the unit of prefectures were obtained from the Agricultural Census of Japan published by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fishery. It would be well to notice that a farm is considered here as a unit of operation and not of ownership, although the both have been regarded almost as the same since the farm land ownership reformation after World War II.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fishery gives the qualification as a farm household to the household which manages more than 0.1 hectare of agricultural land in Eastern Japan within the eastward prefectures from Toyama, Niigata, Gunma, Saitama, Ibaraki and Chiba, and more than 0.05 hectare in Western Japan within the westward prefectures from Ishikawa, Gifu, Nagano, Yamanashi and Tokyo.
As Hokkaido has a cool summer and a short history of agriculture, the farm size here is exceptionally larger than the other Japanese prefectures. The large farms of Hokkaido which operate more than 20 hectares are generally distributed in the eastern part of the island, where dairying, and the cultivation of beans, potatoes, dent corn and sugar beet are the main agricultural activities. Excluding the case of Hokkaido, the large farms of Japan which operate more than 5 hectares are distributed mostly in the northern prefectures of Honshu and partly in Kyushu Island such as Kumamoto prefecture. Located mostly on alluvial fans, diluvial terraces, the foot of volcanoes and drained lakes developed newly after World War II, they produce rice, fruits, milk, and other cash crops.
Now we classify the region of Japan into two groups: the outer zone and the inner zone. Hokkaido, the Tohoku districts, the northern Kanto districts, the Kyushu districts and Niigata prefecture belong to the outer zone. The other regions belong to the inner zone (Fig. 4). Recently the larger farms are gradually growing in number, while the small farms are declining. In Hokkaido this tendency is becoming pronounced, because the agriculturaly developed lands have been increasing, and because the willing farmers have been purchasing the farm lands sold by the households who have given up farming.
In the outer zone except Hokkaido the increase of large farms results from reclaiming the waste lands rather than from decrease of farm households. Though in the inner zone it is a general tendency that the decreasing rate of the farm households has been higher than that of the farm land, the average size of farms has risen only a slight degree : the large farms are still in a small minority. In addition it is recognized in metropolitan areas such as Keihin (Tokyo-Yokohama) that the farm size has been becoming smaller and smaller by the reason of the land conversion from farming to nonagricultural use.
The relation between the farm size and agricultural gross sales differs with regions. The large farm does not always get a high income, and the small farm does not always have a low income. Though the farms in the outer zone need a larger acreage of agricultural land than the inner zone, their agricultural sales do not always increase in proportion to the size of acreage, because the recent cultivation of paddies is legally restricted and the selling price of main products stays low.