There is growing concern that increases in agricultural products import, as a result of Japan's TPP participation, might affect domestic raw materials manufacturing industries, as well as primary industry like agricultural production. Taking vegetable oil industry as a case, this paper examines the industrial structure and competitive strategy from the viewpoint of Porter's 'five forces model' to illustrate the trends of structural change. The analysis reveals that the vegetable oil producing companies are trying to achieve horizontal integration, accelerate overseas operations, enter downstream industries, and rationalize their management. These trends are also observed in the flour industry, another important basic material industry in Japan. These results imply that globalization might hollow out upstream industries and intensify competition among companies in downstream industries.

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This paper examines how vegetable cropping contract businesses ensure stable access to skilled operators through a case study of A Agricultural Cooperatives. Stability is made difficult due to the conflicting labor demands of farm labor during summer versus winter. Stability is gained by combining the labor needs properties through coupled integrated summer and winter adjusted labor supply and demand. In the case of A Agricultural Cooperative, this correspondence meets the precondition of the farming sector entering the road builder labor market. Such an approach ensures that the contract area (the area built-in to the agricultural development plan) maintains initial costs (cooperatives prepared the necessary work equipment) while also providing for the quality of the field-work (such as the initial work guidance and work instructions). In this case, the integrated regional labor force demand of summer and winter has yielded a stable employment circumstance that matches the labor force supply and demand between the different fields of agriculture and road building. This is important as labor shortages in expanded agricultural activity and local industry will be expected from now on.

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Exports of Japanese agricultural and marine products continue to decline due in part to the nuclear accident that occurred at the Tokyo Electric Power Company Fukushima-Daiichi site. However, trademark registration of Japanese regional names in China and Taiwan has presented serious problems as well. This problem of Japanese regional names being registered as trademarks seems to be progressing despite the efforts of the Ministry of Agriculture and Patent Office. If Japanese regional names are trademarked overseas, brand names such as "Koshihikari Rice," that are exported to China might experience a decline in their market potential. In this report, we look into the cases of "Aomori trademark problem," in which a trademark application using Aomori was turned down in China, as well as the case of "Sanuki trademark problem," in which Kagawa Prefecture filed an opposition against Sanuki Udon being trademarked in Taiwan to support Japanese companies but eventually had the trademark application rejected. The similarity in the cases of these two prefectures is twofold: the establishment of a system for continuous monitoring of trademark issues and quick countermeasures taken by government and producers. Such intellectual property strategy formulation and continuous efforts are important for expanding the effort of agricultural and marine products.

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The rapid appreciation of the yen has contributed to stagnation in the export of Japanese strawberry. Japan hopes to expand strawberry exports, yet the exchange rate becomes a serious concern for future expansion. While others have clarified that transport cost reduction is an effective approach for the export expansion of Japanese strawberry, the influence of exchange rate fluctuations has not considered. Thus, this study examines the impacts of exchange rate fluctuations and transport cost reduction considering exchange rate fluctuations on the export of Japanese strawberry in Hong Kong market. The main results of the analysis are as follows. Firstly, the volume of export decreases by 14 percent when the yen appreciates by 13 percent. Secondly, transport cost reduction is also an effective approach for the export expansion of Japanese strawberry even if the yen appreciates.

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Producing and selling of eggs from un-enriched cage systems was banned from 1 January 2012 in the EU market. Today all laying hens in the EU must have at least 750cm^2 of cage area per hen. This study examined the possibility of market potential for animal welfare oriented-eggs in Japan by using current market price and brand research. An arrangement of consumer pricing for eggs at supermarkets in metropolitan areas in Japan was as follows: ordinary eggs → store brand eggs → national brand eggs → BLANK → "NBα" (a certain national brand egg) → barn (hira-gai) or free-range (hanashi-gai) eggs → organic eggs. The results show accordant possibilities regarding the potential for animal welfare friendly-eggs in Japan is as follows. First, reactions to the enriched cage eggs suggest a possibility to shift the increase in the production cost to consumer price by targeting the BLANK price range. Second, the free-range eggs may attain a price target of around \65/egg. However, consumer tolerance for prices of barn or free range eggs in Japan is quite varied. Therefore, we think that the standardization of barn or free-range egg production is required in order for this practice to spread in Japan.

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In Japan, rural communities are experiencing a serious socio-economic situation due to the aging of the farm community, a lack of successors in such farm communities, and the advance of economic globalization. This article discusses workshops for rural activation and the possibilities such workshops hold for stabilizing and sustaining rural communities. The research verifies the meanings and effective method of workshops undertaken by diverse actors in rural area through a case study of "Workshops for Agricultural-related Activities" held in Hiroshima prefecture. By advancing the cooperation among rural villages, the players of agricultural-related activities can solve the problems that they can't solve individually. We confirmed that the workshop as a mechanism for organizing agricultural-related activities provides the diverse set of actors a chance to solve the difficult problems and is an effective approach to advancing agricultural community cooperation.

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This paper investigates the structure of marketing routes for herbal plants (jamu ingredients) and the performance of traders in Central Jawa, Indonesia. The marketing structure is composed of diversified and multi-staged channels. Transactions between traders belonging to the same distributional stage can be observed as improving the assortment of herbal plants available. Many wholesalers are small-scale traders and deal with various kinds of ingredients, while field assembly traders are relatively large-scale traders and are responsible for many functions such as preprocessing. storage, and transportation. Jamu peddlers usually sell traditional liquid jamu in the urban area. Modern jamu factories prefer long-term transaction of ingredients with larger production lot.

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[in Japanese]

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