Effects of Agricultural Improvement Projects can be divided into twogroups. One group is direct effects toward the agricultural production and the other is indirect effects toward the local community and national economy. In this paper, the author clarifies the extension mechanism of the direct effects from a land consolidation project with an analytical tool of DEcision MAking Trial & Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) . A rural town, Nagi in Okayama prefecture is chosen as a case study area. The results from the DEMATEL analysis shows that the total extension mechanism of the direct effects consists of the following four sub-mechanisms.
(1) Reduction of agricultural labor and labor shift from agricultureto non-agricultural sectors,
(2) Effective and intensive use of agricultural land resource,
(3) Changes of cultivation techniques and improvement of yields and qualities of agricultural products, and
(4) Organization of farm households linking the above three sub-mechanisms into closer relations with each other.
Based on this results, the author points out that three factors, such as 1) land consolidation project, 2) adequate organization policy extended by the local government/the extension service station, and 3) subjecthood of local community capable of group adaptation, have enlarged the total amount of effects from the project to farm households in this study area.

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It was pointed out in the previous paper that problem-solving methodology in Total Quality Control (TQC), especally Small Group Activity (SGA), theoretically has high applicability to participatory planning in the field of rural and agricultural planning. The purpose of this report is to demonstrate the SGA's applicability with a case study of eggplant producers' association in Okayama prefecture.
Small group, whose purpose is to establish quality control system of eggplantproduction, was organized by seven producer members and four external agent members including the authors in july, 1990. Meetings of this group have been managed by the external members and continued until now (March, 1991) . As a result of this activity, we can confim the following points which indicate the practical applicability of the SGA.
1) Problem-solving methodology in TQC is available for solving very complicated and mixed technical problems which the producers face in the process of plant-growing.
2) Meeting materials based on objective data have high persuasive power to the producer members.
3) Some of the QC tools are applicable as an effective presentation tools to the producer members.
4) Subjecthood of producer members has been established in the problem-solving process of the activity.
In order to bring more successful results through the SGA, the following regards should be carefully considered.
1) SGA should be carefully managed according to awareness-level of producer members.
2) Every subject of the meeting should be corresponded to the satage of the plant-growing.
3) Introduction of field data collecting & processing system is desireble for scientific control of the plant-growing process.

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