Abstract
The purpose of this study is to analyze the regional relationship and the development process of organic agriculture in Ogawa-Town, one of the pioneering areas of organic agriculture in Japan.
Organic agriculture in Ogawa-Town was started in the beginning of 1970s by a local farmer named ‘K’. Being engaged in his farming, ‘K’ made direct contact with several consumers and local food enterprises in order to supply his products, and accepted people willing to begin organic farming as trainees on his farm, some of them later started organic farming as independent farmers. Since the late 1980s the number of such newcomers in organic agriculture has gradually increased also in Ogawa-Town, while local farmers except for ‘K’ still continued conventional farming. It was in 2001 that one local farmer named ‘A’ changed his way of farming from ‘conventional’ to ‘organic’, partly because of his aging and increase of abandoned farm land. Conclusively, the development process of organic agriculture in Ogawa-Town is quite characteristic in the sense that organic farming gradually extended in the town, caused by social change surrounding agriculture rather than by social movement of farmers’group.
