Abstract
In this paper, we simulated the farming systems of one farmer in Hokkaido district by using the actual field data and took an estimation of the operation area of crops and the production cost from the point of effective use of agricultural machinery and reducing the cost. In order to make clear the possibility of improvement in farm management, we compared the estimated values by simulating with the national average data. Furthermore, we analyzed the possibility of reducing production cost by expanding the farm scale. The results are as follows.
1) Since the farm machinery owned by the farmer is a little oversurplus for the crop production area in the present situation, the fixed machinery cost is higher than the national average fixed cost.
2) In spite of the higher fixed cost being the cause of over mechanization, the labor cost of the farmer is lower than the national average.
3) The larger machinery system must be allowed since there is labor shortage. However, it is more profitable to expand the cropping area by using the capacity of the machinery system and employing some temporary employees only for the farming seasons.
4) It is possible to enlarge the managing area to 30 ha under the same scale of machinery system. By doing this, the production cost will be reduced much more.
