都市近郊における蔬菜生産・販売組織の展開と変容

宮城県名取市上余田地区の事例を手がかりに

抄録

　　　In the bordering area between city and rural village, farmers are necessarily required to consider and discuss their strategies as they put their products on the market for the possible greatest benefit, and then maintain their farming under the circumstances of urbanization and land-development. The following paper, a result of a case study at Kamiyoden, Natori city, attempts to describe the history of their struggle and its present states, through a series of intensive interviews to the members of a voluntary group to sell their seri （dropworts, or Japanese parsley）.
　　　Their cooperation was founded in 1931 and a “cooperative marketing” for their seri was initiated after an innovative effort of a land-owning leader at that time, but it was forced to close its operation in a few years, because of the dominant power of wholesale dealers. It was in the middle of 1960s, that a new cooperation was established mainly by those who had belonged to the class of land-oweners during the pre-war period. The new cooperation, being independent and managed by the members’ initiatives, developed new marketing channels at Sendai and reached its peak in the 70s and 80s, when the government’s policy to convert the production of rice partly to beans and vegetables was enforced.
　　　Current difficulties that they have to meet are 1) the growing tendency to prefer selling seri individually, rather than collectively, among those farmers in large-scale class, and older farmers, and 2) the growing tendency to prefer selling or renting out their farm fields for off-farm purposes, among those members who think it clever for them to prepare for their life after retirement without successors.
　　　Thus, this study points out, first, the importance of farmers’ initiatives and the role of their cooperative association in marketing farm products, and second, their ambivalent meanings in urbanization.