A large number of food industries concentrate in agricultural villages and regional cities, and food business there makes a significant contribution to both employment and economic growth in the region by its sales total. With the increasing globalization of agricultural market, in order to revitalize food industry and agriculture, it is essential for both of them to facilitate and deepen their cooperation at regional level by forming food industry cluster. Looking at the food industry cluster in view of the food system, the major challenges to the food industry cluster are to establish supply chain and value chain strategically, as well as to form vertically organized economic entities. The industrial cluster projects started by Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry in 2001 and the food industrial cluster projects introduced by Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishery in 2005 tend to play a role mostly in product development for enterprises in certain fields. Cooperation between food industry and agriculture can create mutually dependent relationship regarding management resources through transfer of technology, technical know-how, and information system, and by extension can trigger technical innovation. It will take time to reach the point where information sharing between both parties and their accumulated knowledge produce the learning effect.

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In recent years many problems of market mechanism have been revealed. As the profits-making business comes up against a hard wall, the nonprofit organization is more and more revalued. Especially in agricultural sector the local agricultural public corporations become active, on the other hand, the public corporation systems are restructured. In the case of local public corporation in Kanuma City a company for the profits-making business was newly established as an independent sector. The newly-built company is to be regarded as a social enterprise, although the public cooperation itself is as before initiated by the city administration and there is no participation by citizen. In order to promote citizens to participate more easily in non-profit organization, it is necessary to utilize NPO, LLC, LLP, also to put tax reform into practice, and to skill-up human capacities.

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Establishment of rural resources management organizations with farmers' initiative is fundamental policy issue in order to properly conserve and manage rural resources in Japan. The Land Improvement District will be one of the most possible and appropriate organizations to become core of rural resources management organization. Rural resources in Japan are classified by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries as: 1) farm land; 2) irrigation water; 3) environment; 4) organic resources; and 5) rural community. These resources have been managed by rural communities and farmers' organizations including Land Improvement Districts. However, situation in rural area in Japan has been very much changed since 1960s, such as decrease of farm land and farmers, increase of proportion of non-farmers, increase of elderly people and abandonment of farming activities. Other socio/economic/global factors surrounding rural area, such as combine of municipalities, international agricultural trade negotiation and/or climate change, have also affected and accelerated change of its circumstances. In order to establish appropriate rural resources management organization, it is useful to examine history and existing system in foreign countries. Consortia in Italy which has overall membership by whole rural people could be one of these examples which will be applied into Japan. Reorganization of Land Improvement District together with strengthened power, wider membership, enough budget and capable staff could be proposed to be the most suitable option to properly manage rural resources in Japan.

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