2003 Volume 112 Issue 1 Pages 50-72
At present Japanese agriculture is suffering from various problems. One of them is a severe shortage of successors to take over farms, which have been long kept by their parents, who engaged in both farming and off-farm work. They are now retiring. In this situation it is important to discuss the prospects of agricultural activities and rural communities. This study analyzes the characteristics of present agriculture and evaluates the sustainability of agricultural activities in the near future. The study area is the Isawa alluvial fan in Iwate Prefecture where many part-time farmers have just started retiring.
First, 214 rural villages in the Isawa alluvial fan were classified into three types by applying a multivariate analysis to 1995 Agricultural Census data. The types are agricultural, intermediate, and non-agricultural. The agricultural villages are distributed in the southern part of the alluvial fan, with high diluvial uplands with elevations of 100 to 200 meters that are remote from local urban centers. On the other hand, the non-agricultural villages extend over the northern and eastern part of the fan area with low elevations and are located near local urban centers or along the main roads. The intermediate villages are distributed between the areas of the former two types of village.
Based on field-work in the sample villages which represent the three types, farmers in the agricultural village have a relatively strong inclination to continue farming and they have organized a farming support group to keep agriculture by themselves. In the non-agricultural village farm size is relatively small, and most farmers' main income sources are off-farm work. They will gradually transfer their agricultural activities to full-time farmers in neighboring villages and retire from farming. In the intermediate village, a few viable farmers will continue as full-time farmers, while many others will retire from farming. The former will gradually take over the agricultural activities of the latter.
The regional differences of the agriculture types are mainly defined by accessibility to local urban centers and the land conditions such as the elevations of diluvial uplands in the Isawa alluvial fan.
