Abstract
The achievement of the total system for reorganizing regional agriculture may be expected very much in the government policies for agriculture and rural community and its models are now studied hard by economists and sociologists in agriculture. Thus, when land and water resources development projects are recently conducted, at the same time, something like its models is commonly designed for reorganizing a regional agriculture composed of its agencies and farmers. Agencies usually include those of national and local governments, agricultural cooperatives, land and water use groups. etc., which must perform their own parts of a regional agriculture. The total system, to be noticed, works on two principles of “medium or intermediate” and “organism or interrelation” which are today highlighted by regionalists and agronomists respectively. “Medium” based on a regional ecology and community is meaned by all intermediates, such as, agencies of individuals supported by a totality but not a choice of decentralization or centralization, a medium technology between traditional and modern technologies. This paper will argue that the above position of the total system presents an overly optimistic view. It neglects two important aspects of both the expectations bias under the present changeable and unforeseeable circumstance, and the internal inequality (conflict) and the external inequality of regional agriculture reorganized by the total system. The writer's recent study, therefore. raises a serious question about that the total system might be taken no further notice of these policies in the future, just as the cooperative groups for joint farming have flickered out soon after these established extensively during 1960's-1970's; because of the internal conflict (antagonism) and the external conflict of these groups. The internal conflict is an uncompatibility or inequality with the satisfaction of members' objectives and the effectiveness of the institutional-organizational framework of the total system in developing regional agriculture, that is, antagonism between individuals and their groups. This conflict is caused by its own system of infrastructure and incentives which break down when the system is overthrown (oriented totalism or collaboration), and by members' self-organized system (oriented individualism). The external conflict is a deficiency of adapting a group or organization to its environment, that is, a shortage of its own self-reforming ability met by its external change. The inequality and the deficiency are found as two facts by researching a successful group (I Agric. Coop. Inc.) and a failed group (0 Agric. Coop. Inc.) for joint farming at middle and late season citrus varieties product area in Mihama district in Mie prefecture. The two facts will be by no means special factors of joint farming, but rather be concerned about points of preventing the total system from reorganizing regional agriculture. The method of finding the facts is a way to research the groups and to examine them by the system conceptions of “Modern Organization Theories”, such as, these of C. I. Barnard, H. A. Simon, J. G. March, and H. I. Ansoff.
