Abstract
Rurals areas of the eastern Kanto Plain, in which the study area is situated, were characterized until recently by traditional farming based on such cereals as rice and wheat, and sweet potatoes and industrial crops. But, in the past twenty years, these areas have greatly changed their character through the development of highly commercial agriculture, such as vegetable growing, flower growing, and large-scale pig raising, on the one hand, and the expansion of part-time farming on the other. Farms in outer suburban areas around large cities are composed of two distinct groups. One group of farms manages to earn a sufficient income from farming activities, generally by increasing the agricultural intensity of their farms. In the other group of farms, high dependence upon non-agricultural income brings about the contraction of farm management. In this study, the author focuses his attention on the former group of farms, that is, agriculturally viable farms. In fact, these viable farms exert great efforts at all times to make their farm management the most profitable, taking into account the size of their cultivated land and labor force, and other conditions. In order to grasp the regional characteristics of an agricultural area, it is therefore very important to examine the contents of farm management of viable farms and the conditions of the formation of these farms This approach may be particularly effective in outer suburban areas, where various types of viable farming exist and change rapidly their farm management.
Three agricultural communities (Tozaki, Omae, and Uchikamo) were taken as the study area. Viable farms were defined as farms with male regular farm workers. Operationally, the author adopted three conditions : (1) farms dependent mainly upon agricultural income, (2) farms having at least one male regular farm worker under sixty-five years of age, and (3) the male regular farm worker is not engaged in non-agricultural jobs more than thirty days. Farms which conform to all of these three conditions are considered as viable farms.
In 1980, there exist eighty-four viable farms in the three communities This accounts for 56 percent of the total number of farms. These viable farms were classified in terms of a leading sector of production in agricultural income. Lotus root cultivation is practiced as a leading sector in fifty-seven viable farms. Especially in Tozaki and Omae, fifty-two out of fifty-six viable farms cultivate lotus roots as a major product. In fact, the study area forms a part of a leading producing area of lotus roots in Japan, There are, however, few farms which gain their agricultural income solely from lotus root cultivation. The effective utilization of upland fields has an important meaning in these viable farms because their cultivated land is composed of the combination between paddy fields in the alluvial plain and upland fields in the diluvial upland. Therefore, by the second sector in agricultural income, they were further divided into several subtypes (lotus roots with crops of ordinary upland fields, lotus roots with sericulture, and lotus roots with Japanese pears, for example). On the other hand, in Uchikamo, upland fields occupy the large part of cultivated area, where the leading sector of production of each viable farm is relatively dispersed among various sectors, such as flowers in green houses and pig raising.
As the first step of analysis, the author examined each of the viable farming types succesively. Also, he investigated the conditions which influenced the differentiation of the viable farming types and, at the same time, the general characteristics which were commonly observed in all types. After that, the regional character of the viable farming in the study area were discussed.
In this way, we could recognize in the viable farming of the study area the following characteristics, which seemed generally applicable to the outer suburban areas of large cities.
