The Development Factor of the Organic Agriculture in a Local Community: A Case Study of Shimosato-Ikku, Ogawa Town, Saitama Prefecture

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyze the development of the organic agriculture in a local community, Shimosato-Ikku, focusing on the social relationships among local community.　Organic agriculture in Ogawa-Town was started in the beginning of 1970s by a local farmer named Mr.Kaneko. He accepted people willing to begin organic farming as trainees. And 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 still continued conventional farming.

In Shimosato-Ikku it was in 2001 that one local farmer named Mr.Ando changed his way of farming from ‘conventional’ to ‘organic’, partly because of his aging and increase of abandoned cultivated land. Mr.Ando tried to grow soybean in organic way and to improve soil conditions. Organic soybean production was gradually increased, being led by “ShimosatoKikaikakumiai”, which undertook farming machinery work among village farmers. Furthermore, Mr.Ando started organic rice farming and succeeded in getting stable consumers outsides Ogawa-Town. In 2007, Shimosato-Ikku implemented a project, “Managing Project for Agricultural Land, Water and Environment” financed by Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF), and it contributed to diffuse organic rice farming in the village.

Conclusively, Mr.Ando played an important role as a mediator, who firstly changed his conventional farming into organic way and connected other conventional farmers with organic farming pioneer Mr.Kaneko. However, it would be impossible without Mr.Kaneko, who has been engaged in organic farming since 1970s and constructed producer- consumer networks in a various way both insides and outsides Ogawa-Town.