Journal of Rural Problems

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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the farming system under the Land Tenure System. By the beginning of the 1980s, almost all of the collectives in rural China had adopted the Land Tenancy System, which dismantled collectively operated farming and restored family-based farming such that individual households could now contract for the use of collective land.
Empirical evidence from Sichuan province shows that, contrary to the villages in some of the more prosperous coastal areas, the poor collectives in our sampled area played their roles by levying a heavy tax and fee duty on farmers. Rather than improving the efficiency of individual small-scale farming, the heavy tax and fee duty exploited the profitability of the farmers' agricultural production. Regarding the problem of the heavy financial burden on farming, numerous policies and laws have been implemented, but no effective solution yet exists. Consequently, farmers with very tight land holdings have no other choice than to pursue a way of life in which they cultivate farmland only to provide themselves with agricultural products, while earning income for their life by depending mainly on wage working outside the farm. As more and more of the rural labor force shifts their working time outside the farm, not only is agricultural development depressed, but also the sustainability of the rural community becomes an issue. Clearly how to improve the efficiency of farming system under the Land Tenure System has become a crucial aspect of the problem of maintaining the sustainability of the rural community.

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Direct sales stores for farm products (DSSFP) were built throughout Japan in the 1990s, including many in Kumamoto Prefecture. Among them were DSSFP which were built by public investment; these were facilities intended to attract outside money into the region, so as to develop the local economy of the town and its villages. In Kyushu in particular, many tourists visit DSSFP supported eco-tourist spots, and as a result it appears that DSSFP do indeed contribute to regional development.
As a case study, this paper examines six DSSFP facilities which are located in agricultural and mountain areas of Kumamoto Prefecture, focusing on the two following areas:
·Firstly, 1) to calculate the turnover rate of public investment, and the break-even point for maintaining public facilities, and 2) to prove that in regions with capital deficit, administrative assets have the potential to act in the same way as capital to help sustain public facilities.
·Secondly, to show that public facilities (DSSFP) are economic agents that create capital, and capital-value circulation, within regions with capital deficit.
By consideration of the above, it is concluded that the value of DSSFP public facilities can be maintained through periods of depreciation by the appropriation of tax (corporate tax, income tax, consumption tax) as sources of financial reimbursement, that is, public facilities have the potential to serve as a substitute for capital.

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