The purpose of the paper is to clarify the role of the regional agricultural policy under the WTO regime. The most important problem for Jpanese agriculture is the stagnation or decrease of the food expenditure per head. So the main issue is to protect Japanese agriculture by maintaining the Japanese type of dietary.
The second issue is to maintain the agricultural “träger”. There are many kinds of agricultural “träger” in Japan, for example, the “träger” of regional agriculture, farm business, manual labour, regional resourses and rural society.
The third issue is to establish a policy for less favoured areas. It is necessary to develop the soft method of industrial policy, to share the cost of maintaining the national land and environment, and to cover the difference between costs and market prices.
Finally we must establish the unified agricultural organization within each rural sociaty, in oder to arrange land-use and promote regional agriculture.

View full abstract

The purpose of this paper is to make clear the problem of disharmony between the ownership of land and its utilization and management, by analyzing the areas concretely, and to propose the measures the local government has to take under effects of the internationalization.
The outline of this paper is as follows.
(1) In Kyoto prefecture, the problem of disharmony arises in two areas, the suburban area and the mountainous area. In these areas, ten-ants of land have decreased because of the fall of agricultural profitability. Moreover, in the suburban area where the merchandization of land has progreassed, owners of land tend to hesitate to lend the land. Consequently, in these areas, the separation of the ownership of land and its utilization is not connected with enlargement of agricultural management scale.
(2) The progress of the internationalization brings the surplus of domestic farmland because of the import of agricultural products, and the other it promotes the merchandization of land because of deregulation. It increases the idle farmland in these areas.
(3) Under this situation, it is necessary for local governments in these areas to bring up the subjects which can use and manage the farmland rather than promote liquidization of the farmland.

View full abstract

The aims of this paper are to clarify: (1) the problems of regional agriculture in internationalization, (2) the roles and the problems of agricultural cooperatives, (3) the problems of agricultural marketing by the cooperatives, (4) the guidance for farm management by the cooperatives, (5) reorganization of the cooperatives setups.
It became very difficult to continue agricultural management under the conditions of import liberalization and aging of labour forces. In these situations, cooperatives must take effective means to be the necleus of management in regional agriculture and marketing of agricultural products through the guidance for farm management. In addition, cooperatives must metamorphose themselves on the organization and functional aspets.

View full abstract

This paper examines the issues and direction of rural policy in the age of globalization. First, the main problems are analyzed by the typical types of a rural society. Second, the regional policies after 1945 are reviewed. Third, the standpoint is proposed that the rural policy should aim at the integrated development, including non-economic aspects, of rural societies. Fourth, for this purpose, it is shown that citizen's participation in policy making is an essential factor through three case studies. They are Yuza-Machi as a traditional medium-sized rice society, Miyama-Cho as a marginal small-sized mountain society and Habikino-Shi as a large-sized society in the outskirts of a megalopolis. Last, recommendations to policy making institutes and conditions for citizen's participation is considered.
The analysis of three cases suggests that integrated development in rural societies is achieved by the policy from the viewpoints of relationships, circulation, diversity and sustainability and citizen's participation. Policy making institutes at each level of villages, municipalities, regions, prefectures and a nation are recommended to carry out their rural policies paying attention to such points.

View full abstract