This paper aims to present the results of the social science workshop, “The Relationship between Organic Farming and Contemporary Peasant and Family Farming,” which was held online by the Japanese Society of Organic Agriculture Science on October 18, 2020. In addition, this paper aims to expand new research areas or topics through the results of the workshop. The workshop consisted of two parts: two lectures in the morning and a small session in the afternoon. The lecturers were Ikegami Koichi, a rural economist, and Tokuno Sadao, a rural sociologist. The discussants were Aikawa Yoich, a rural sociologist, Ito Ryoji, a rural economist, and Sekine Kae, a rural economist.

I was a coordinator, and the lecturers, discussants, and other participants discussed some issues and propositions.

The workshop focused on four issues: the reason why contemporary peasant and family farming is now reevaluated, the relationship between contemporary peasant and family farming and organic farming, what is required to maintain local farming and local community, and what should be done to promote the reevaluation of contemporary peasant and family farming in Japan. Discussions on the four issues led to twenty-five propositions.

Finally, I pointed out two important things. First, issues and propositions presented from a global perspective precisely overlapped with those presented from a local perspective. This meant that farmers’ practices are universal across the world. Second, it is important to continue empirical research from the perspective of local people while keeping a distance from the discourse of a sustainable coexistence between people and nature.

Behind an international trend of high evaluation of peasants, there lies the growing recognition about necessity of transformation of industrial agro-food system since the 2010s. ‘Repeasantization and new peasantry’, an achievement of European peasant studies, aims at autonomy and survival for resisting deprivation and dependence of or to ‘the empire of food’. Agroecology also aims to shift a current agri-food system. However, understanding agroecology as a skill to compensate deficiencies of industrial agri-food system is getting generalized as agroecology expands. This fact can be called ‘the trap of institutionalization’. Such trap is observed in the process of losing an aspect of social movement and inclining to aspect of high economic value in Japanese organic farming. Despite the deepening of organic farming theory, intrinsic organic farming emphasizing circulation and diversity has been stagnant, while ’mono-culture’ organic farming has increased. Such depolarization poses which direction ought to be pursued for Japanese organic farming. Although most of intrinsic organic farmers are peasants, agricultural politicians and economist are neglecting peasants. Actually, Japanese peasants take many agroecological practices including organic farming. It is necessary to make peasants visible and suggest alternative path for development suitable for peasant farming.

The objective of this article is to represent four controversial arguments on organic farming, peasant, and family farming and concerning policies in contemporary society based on literature review on this field. The four arguments are the following: 1) To overcome the limits of pre-existing arguments on conventionalization and bifurcation of organic farming and pay more attention to non-economic decisive factors, it introduces the argument of good matches. 2) It reviews the arguments on coexistence of diverse agricultural models and proposes to employ the notion of confrontation among them to better analyze the rural reality. It also emphasizes the heterogeneity of agricultural policies enforced under the name of maintaining coexistence of diverse agricultural models in Japan and EU. 3) It criticizes the economically monopolized criterion adopted to evaluate faming systems, both conventional and organic, and claims the necessity to employ social and ecological criteria to redirect the trajectory of farms’ development. 4) When these three-dimensional criteria on farming systems are applied, it argues that small-scale family farming maintains the superiority to realize the sustainable society comparing to other farming systems. It concludes that discussions on agricultural policies and related researches should recognize these four controversial arguments and learning from the policy turns evolving in EU, the US, and the UN organizations.

In the present study, we examined the productivity of Enokitake mushroom (Flammulina velutipes) on substrates containing materials with different cutting lengths, and the physical effect as roughage of silage prepared from the resultant spent mushroom substrates. In Experiment 1, sweetcorn stover after harvest of the grains was cut into 13mm (S) and 28mm (L) and lactic-fermented in plastic bags for preservability (FCS). Cultivation experiment of Enokitake mushroom was conducted using substrates in which corncob was replaced with graded levels of S- and L-FCS (0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%). Among the 8 experimental groups, the spent substrate of L75% group was selected as the silage material in Experiment 2, because this group showed no disadvantage other than the elongated cultivation period, and contained longer length and greater content of FCS. In Experiment 2, the chemical components of corn silage and silages made of spent mushroom substrates (SMS) from an Enokitake farmer and L75% group were measured. Furthermore, feed intake, eating and ruminating times and chewing activity of four ewes given these silages were recorded. The SMS and L75 silages were low in lactic acid level and relatively high in pH, compared with corn silage, but did not exhibit unpleasant color, odor and texture. In in vivo study using the above ewes, feed intake tended to increased when SMS and L75 silages were given, eating and ruminating times and the number of chews decreased when SMS silage was given and recovered in part when L75 silage was given.

In conclusion, it was suggested that Enokitake mushroom can be cultivated on the substrate containing long-cut FCS, and the silage made of the resultant spent substrate may have a physical effect as roughage to some extent.

abstrFrom 2020 to 2021, we investigated levee management conditions in Nagai City in the Okitama area and Tsuruoka City in the Shonai area of Yamagata Prefecture. In Nagai City, herbicides were used on the levees of 80% of the paddy fields surveyed. In Nagai City, the slope angle between fields in the survey area is 5.5 per mil, single paddy fields are small, levees are numerous, and the area of the levee slopes is large, which means that the work-load required for weed control is high. It was considered that herbicide might be used to reduce labor. The results of an interview-based survey, showed that many farmers cited “a reduction of working hours (60%)” and “a reduction in labor load (60%)” as reasons for using herbicides. On the other hand, in order to prevent the levees from collapsing, 64% of the levees were coated with soil. In contrast, in Tsuruoka City, no herbicides were used on any of the levees surveyed, and weeds on the levees were managed by mowing. The slope between fields in the survey area of Tsuruoka City is as gentle as 0.54 per mil, which is classified as flat land. The number of levees and the cumulative area of levee slopes is low, which means that the total area requiring weed management is smaller than that in Nagai City. In addition, numerous farmers have introduced self-propelled mowers to reduce the workload associated with mowing, making it easier to manage levee weeds by mowing. Interestingly, the results of the interview survey, revealed that many of the farmers (54%) cited “local customs and climate” and “conservation of environment” as the reason why weeding was performed by mowing without using herbicides. The motivation of farmers in Tsuruoka City to perform weed management by mowing is a topic for future study.act