The culture of Chestnuts of Tanba-variety in Ibaraki Prefecture has been gradually developed since 1898. The chestnut culture in the prefecture dominates all other prefectures in Japan in 1964, which 16.9% of the total area of chestnut fields and 16.0% of the national yield. The chestnut fields are distributed on the diluvial hilly land covered with volcanic ash, and most of them were converted from forest land or unirrigated fields.
The development of the chestnut culture is divided to two periods based on the difference in the nature of farming type and farm management. In the first half of the period before 1955, the culture was managed by landowners, but after the World War II it has been introduced by middle and lower class farmers. They aimed to enlarge the scale of their farming by means of conversion from forest land to chestnut fields. The introduction of chestnut culture into farming system was a reflection of the economic conditions such as agricultural panic in the first period of Showa era and inflation in the postwar period. In other words, chestnut culture was significant as a subsidiary crop in farm economy which has been limited to rice farming for a long time.
After 1955, two farming types of chestnut culture appeared. The one is the trend to specialize in chestnut culture with extensive fields. The other is the development in adaptation to the shortage of labour in the last two decades. In this case, many of the chestnut fields are converted from unirrigated fields.
The chestnut growing areas in the central part of Ibaraki prefecture forms an agricultural region characterized by chestnut culture. However, according to the authors survey the agricultural structure in the region is still unstable in its farming system and farm economy.
