Abstract
Agriculture in Japan changed drastically during the latter half of the 20th century, and it currently faces various problems. A number of farmers stopped farming in the 1990s, while keeping their farmland, mainly because of a lack of farm successors. It is necessary to consider the way to continue agricultural production and to find those who maintain farming activities in the future. This paper argues the sustainability of agriculture with regard to farm successors by presenting case studies on large-scale tenant rice farming in the Hokuriku District. There are two dominant types of successful farm successors in the Hokuriku District. One is the industrialized and commercialized farming operations by farm companies and farmers' cooperatives. This type is widely found in Niigata Prefecture. The other type is community farms, which are organized by farm support groups consisted of local village farmers. This type is typically found in Toyama and Fukui Prefectures. The national and prefectural governments encourage community farms by providing financial assistance to build common farm facilities and to introduce farm machinery. My field studies on a farm company and a farmers' cooperative in the city of Joetsu, Niigata Prefecture and a community farm in the town of Nyuzen, Toyama Prefecture suggest that they play an important role in maintaining farming in each locality and that they are expected to become dominant successors of rice farming and rural community.
