2015 Volume 33 Issue 2 Pages 60-69
The environment of family farm management in the Tohoku Region, centered on rice-paddy regions, is in a severe situation due to falling rice prices. Using the results of settlement cards and individual form data from the Census of Agriculture and Forestry, this paper first analyzes trends in family farm management and farmer population in each prefecture by classification agricultural area and then analyzes the regional characteristics of large-scale management of rice growing and related trends. The results of these analyses have made the following points clear: First， that fragility of the workforce is advancing as farmer population decreases and farmer households rapidly age, chiefly in mountainous areas of the Tohoku region; second, that analysis of large-scale management of rice growing shows that there are substantial differences in the conditions of management of rice growing, such as where crops are sold, between Tohoku and the village of Ogata; third, that the trend toward expansion in scale is weak in Tohoku and Ogata even while cultivated land under management is expanding in the Kanto region and west; fourth, that while organizational management is common in the Kanto region and west, in Tohoku and Ogata family management is the main stream; and fifth, that even though family management in Tohoku is able to secure a succeeding generation for family farms living together with the current farming generation, few of these successors actually are employed in farming. Our findings show that there are major regional differences in areas such as forms of management and age of managers in large-scale management of rice growing and that in Tohoku in particular managers approaching a change in generation are increasing rapidly in number, so that support toward advancing such a change in generation is important.
