Abstract
Agricultural producers’ cooperative corporation “Kamikomatsu production organization” has a history of 35 years, having conquered many difficulties since its foundation in 1964.
The agricultural producers’ cooperative corporation is a legal person based on the law of agricultural cooperatives. Accordingly Kamikomatsu production organization is a farming unit from a legal point of view. In its actual state, however, it is a cooperative group which is composed of 14 family farms. That is, the family farms, maintaining themselves as independent economic units, formed such an organization for collaboration as to make their farmings more efficient.
This type of cooperative group often encounters a problem how, making the best use of the merit of cooperation, such as the curtailment of expenses, the improvement of labor efficiency and so on, to satisfy the individual family farm’ s intention or will. This is, in effect, the problem of “individuality and collectivity”.
The impetuous pursuit of cooperativeness in agriculture often impairs individual’ s will to work and thus lowers the yield per 10 ares. Also Kamikomatsu production organaization was confronted at first with this problem. But it has overcome this problem and other difficulties as well, and thus continues working up to the present.
In this paper we look back over the history of this production organization and make an attempt to bring out some keys to the success any cooperative group can achieve.
