2022 Volume 93 Issue 4 Pages 349-366
This study analyzes the historical process of how the Farmland Consolidation Law in Japan was established under the Industry Development Policy. The purpose of the study is to clarify how the Farmland Consolidation Law is associated with the Industry Development Policy, which has not been fully investigated and will have significant implications for agricultural policy design in the future. Our new findings are that farmland adjustment works were carried out to increase productivity and profitability because they were necessary to increase rice exports as a means of acquiring foreign currency. In particular, the Sino-Japanese War had severe effects on national finances, depleting state monetary reserves. To address this difficulty, a further increase in rice exports was expected. Thus, we can say that the Farmland Consolidation Law was established to accelerate farmland adjustment works for this purpose.
