2018 Volume 35 Issue 2 Pages 17-28
One of the features of the apple production in Japan is that apple farmers have produced apples as luxury foods. However, the demands for domestic apples for processing are increasing. Therefore, the increasing supply of them is desired. In response, the national government has put emphasis on reinforcing the production of processed apples since 2010. Especially, they have been trying to expand orchards which specialized in producing apples for processing. At the same time, such farming is expected to be introduced to large-size apple orchards. They are regarded as main producers in the future, since farming is considered as labor-saving. The aim of this paper is to verify based on the records of real management cases, whether large-scale apple orchards that mainly produce apples for processing can run profitably. The following result were obtained. Farming for apples for processing is highly labor-saving, highly efficient and highly profitable. Because farmers don’t need to work on the trees and can grow them higher, they can get higher yield with lower labor input. The cost level of the farming for apples for processing seems low enough to expect some profitability even at market prices. However, the business size of the farming is smaller for its farm size. Therefore, fixed costs push profitability down so strongly that farmers would not be able to get enough earnings if they rely only on orchards for apples for processing.
