The Growth of Ume Production and Its Processing Industries in Minabegawa-mura, Wakayama Prefecture

Abstract

Since the l970's, agriculture in Japan has suffered from several structural problems, such as an increase in the aged population engaged in farming and a lack of labour, besides the liberalization of trade in agricultural products. Under these unfavorable conditions it has been hard for farming households to earn as high an income as other industrial sectors. Therefore the younger generation deserted their villages and many farmers have sought other sources of income from alternative sectors, resulting in the economic weakness of Japanese agriculture. Such a tendency is especially noticeable in remote and mountainous regions. Howerver, in many villages farmers have been struggling to overcome such conditions through cultivating certain high-value products. This paper describes ume (Japanese plum) farming in Minabegawa-mura, Wakayama Prefecture, as an example of such farming, in order to evaluate the possibility of survival for Japanese agriculture in isolated or mountainous areas. The Minabegawa-mura village is situated in such a mountainous region, far from the communting zone of the Osaka Metropolitan Area. In this village many households have conducted aggressive farming and majority of the households are either sen-gyo-noka (=full-time farmers) or daiisshu-kengyo-noka (=mainly farming part-time farmers). They are engaged in ume farming and have enjoyed high and stable incomes since the l98O's. This village is roughly divided into a traditional ume farming area and a new area converted from citrus cultivation. The author investigated how ume farming in this village emerged and has become prosperous. There had been many ume processing factories around the Minabegawa village since the pre-war time. Following the increasing demand for umeboshi (ume pickles), ume production has increased remarkably during the early l98O's. Ume farming consists of a short busy season for harvesting, which lasts about one month, and a long non-busy season. Every household has to distribute its family members to some other agricultural sector or non-agricultural occupations during the non-busy season. This sample study uncovers the importance of additional incomes for the farmers during the non-busy season, in order to sustain their life in the village. Interviews were held in two sample settlements to clarify how each farming household maintained a high income. One of the settlements was selected from the above-mentioned traditional ume growing area, and the other from the new area. The former area is located in the plains, and the latter in the mountains. The quality of ume produced in the traditional area is much better than that in the new area. In the former, during the period when ume farmers are not busy, they generally cultivate vegetables and flowers in their fields, while those in the latter area work for the non-agricultural sectors in the village in order to maintain their families. As a key crop the high price of ume has been maintained by increasing demand from the processing factories in the village. The efforts of the Agricultural Cooperative Association improved the quality of ume to make it the well-known product of this village, and as a result, the price of ume here has been boosted twice in these few years. The accumulation of umeboshi factories in the village was one of the major factors in the development of ume farming. This accumlation enabled the farmers to sell their crop at a high price as well as to get part-time jobs. A boom in umeboshi as a healthy food in the 1980's expanded the domestic market and increased the import of half-processed ume from Asian countries, especially from Taiwan. Ume produced in this village was used mainly for the high-quality ume-boshi, while the imports were used for the low-priced. The final processes, such as seasoniutg, sorting and packing in umeboshi production were formerly done in factories near consuming areas.

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