Abstract
The purpose of this study is to categorize Japanese agricultural regions by their strategies for survival and development, and to attempt to classify these regions by their characteristics and distribution patterns. We created a database based on the 2015 Census of Agriculture and Forestry, using municipalities as the unit region, and selected 37 indicators related to farm households, agricultural labor force, management, land use, lease of arable land, contracted rice cultivation, agricultural machinery, productivity, and crop type, and conducted a multivariate analysis. As a result, Japan was classified into six regional types: “general field crop,” “small-scale field crop,” “small-scale combined rice crop,” “rice-centered,” “large-scale vegetable-centered,” and “large-scale field crop and livestock production.” The following four points became clear from the results. First, the results of the classification of agricultural regions are almost consistent with the basic structure of agricultural regions shown in previous studies. Second, it highlighted the advantages of agriculture in Hokkaido for its survival and development. Third, with the exception of Hokkaido, the profitable agricultural development areas from an economic viewpoint were distributed in spots rather than in areas. The fourth point is that “visualization” is necessary in the process of multivariate analysis, considering that the final classification of the regions is also subjective.
