The new Food Act enforced in November 1, 1995. It is a drastic change of rice marketing and distribution, but expression of the Act is different in each agricultural and economical condition, for example in the unit of prefecture Hokkaido, Tohoku, and Hokuriku districts are composed by many rice export prefectures, while Kanto, Kinki, and Tokai districts are composed by many rice import prefectures. Under the new Act a position of agricultural-coop is exchanged from a consignor to an independent seller too. I want to clarified the characteristic of agricultural-coops' roll. In order to this purpose three prefectures are selected in Tokai district and three prefectures are remarkable in rice self-sufficient rate, which is estimated a person rice consumption 70kg by the year. The conclusion is as follows; 1. Three prefecture characteristics, -Mie prefecture; typical rice export prefecture. -Aichi prefecture; typical rice import prefecture. -Gifu prefecture; typical self-sufficient prefecture. 2. Thus, two cooperative's correspondence is necessary to solve these problems. -The first is to take a serious view of area circulation and area consumption to gain the consumers support. -The second is to keep the various selling channels by the members participation.

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The Tokai Coop, a consumer's cooperative group covering three Prefectures of Aichi, Gifu and Mie, have been giving much importance to the supply of local rice produced in the area. However, the disturbance so-called "Heisei Rice Trouble" brought much confusion to the Cooperative's rice business and by the autumn of 1995 the amount of the rice supply did not reach to that of 1992 yet. The main reason of the delay of the supply recovery is the weakness of the business constitution of the Cooperative which has relied on the New Food Act "system". The Tokai Coop is making effort for the reconstruction of the rice business under the New Food Act. At the moment the Coop is attaching importance to the prices and widening the rice brand items, in order to respond to the market competition brought about from the rice deregulation. But this policy is contradictory to the policy of the precedence of rice produced in the area. I am convinced that the most important thing is to make the most of attempts experimented by now and to develop the policy of attaching importance to the locally produced rice.

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Shanghai's production and distribution system of fruits and vegetables has gone through three stages of development since the foundation of the People's Republic of China. The "market economy forming stage, "since the mid-80's, is the third stage. The vegetable and fruit production and distribution systems are changing due to two factors: movement towards market economy, and a large-scale development in the east coastal district of Pudong which diverts suburb farm-lands to industrial and housing areas. Until recently, China's socialist economy centralized the production and distribution of fruits and vegetables and aimed for self-sufficiency within the provinces. The consequence of this economic policy was a food shortage which lasted from the late 50s to the early 80s. The revision of the faulty policy lead to a long awaited reform. At present, in Shanghai, vegetables are distributed either to wholesale markets or directly to retail stores. The wholesale markets are either state-owned and private. Recently, vegetable distribution by private wholesale markets has been increasing. Nevertheless, the "Shanghai Vegetable Corporation," which once had monopoly on Shanghai's vegetable distribution, still carries 900,000 tons which account for 60% of Shanghai's annual vegetable consumption. There are twenty one state-owned wholesale markets in Shanghai (as of August, 1995). Four of them are large-scale markets dealing in vegetables which come from outside the province. The other seventeen are small-scale markets, dealing in fresh soft-leaf vegetables from suburban farms around Shanghai. While Shanghai's fruit and vegetable distribution system has gone through several stages and is rapidly changing, its market system is in an initial stage. Consequently, it is the market system which Shanghai must urgently develop so that its market mechanism can work properly.

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The purpose of this paper in to examine a role of commercial capital for agricultural products under the expansion of agricultural market in southeast Asia, taking rice traders in Thailand for example. Recently, market and distribution problems have become economically more important in the developing areas and a considerable number of studies have made on this point. What seems to be liking, however, is the proper valuation of commercial capital which actually play on active part in the market. This study has shown three important points for the study on market problems in the developing areas. The first is that we should not adhere to the problems of overseas Chinese too much. The second is that it is theoretically important to clarify the differences of "pre-modern character" among overseas Chinese, capital in general and commercial capital. The third is that we need to re-valuate the behaviour of commercial capital which has been defined fraudelent and not effective in many studies in the past. In the case of rice market in Thailand, we can find that commercial capital has made a great contribution to the development of the market by adjusting its functions and forms.

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