The purpose of this paper is to clarify, based on the author's experiences, the significance and problems of involvement by university researchers in regional contribution activities. The following observations are made.

First, university researchers' involvement in regional contribution activities is ①being able to expand one's research field, ②being able to make wide personal connections, ③satisfaction derived from activities.

Second, regional contribution activities by university researchers have been conducted primarily by the will and initiative of individual researchers; if the burden of this responsibility increases, the incentive to participate in such activities will decline.

Third, to solve such problems, it is necessary to incorporate regional contribution activities as a part of formal university educational activities.

A number of large-scale projects are currently underway in Akita Prefecture to facilitate the transition away from an over-reliance on rice production to vegetable production. We examined famer’s markets that had previously been underutilized for marketing and selling vegetables. This paper describes the results obtained for farmers' market C. First, the overall sales at farmers' market C have increased year-on-year, with vegetables accounting for a large proportion of total sales. Second, a wide variety of vegetables are being cultivated for sale at the famers' market. Third, although sales have progressed smoothly increased over time, the ability to provide customers with a sufficient variety of vegetables in the winter can be difficult due to heavy snowfalls that occur in the region. It is therefore considered important to receive instruction in methods for cultivating new crops, as well as the use of greenhouses to produce crops.

While direct sales of brown rice by Agricultural Co-operatives is expanding, an affiliated company Manages the rice milling plant the agricultural Co-operatives, and the group of Agricultural Co-operatives is rewarded with good results by direct sale of polished rice, mainly to a commercial vendor in a metropolitan area of Yamagata Prefecture. In this report, I clarified the following points using Agricultural Cooperatives A in Yamagata Prefecture. As an example. As a result of the inspection, A big contribution to profits and total sales and Improvement of the production farmer amount of payment can be seen in the advantage provided by regional differences in between the metropolitan area and Production district. The process l recommend bypasses intermediaries by directing selecting rice stock from the neighboring prefecture and blending it with locally produced rice to create a low cost product and sell it directly in the metropolitan area through Agricultural Cooperatives A without the aid of the National Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Associations Prefectural Headquarters. A match of A group business of Agricultural Co-operatives is showing the aspect of "rice-cleaning mill of Agricultural Co-operatives" which became united with the surrounding Agricultural Co-operatives already, and it can also be said the new type of "rice business marketing".

The Cases "Marudori System" are introduced gradually increase, because farmers need to produce high quality citrus fruits. It is possible and efficiency for farmers to use the facilities of “Marudori System” in group, because of reducing costs and improving technique. At “area KG" in Suouooshima town of Yamaguchi prefecture, four farmers formed "Group Use Marudori System" by joining pipes to the facilities that the one of them introduced before. In this case, there are three following reason that the farmer who is one of them and introduced “Marudori System” at first allowed other three farmers to use his facilities, i) small initial investment, ii) the technological characteristics that conflict between farmers hardly occurs, iii) the high price which will be accomplished to raise quality and increase and stabilize quantity of production with many farmers of this region. When we assume “area KG” a model case to introduce “Group Use Marudori System”, the following conditions are necessary and important. The leading farmers have intention to introduce new technology ahead of other farmers. The conditions of orchards around the one where the facilities was installed first are good for ''Marudori System". Organizations like as public office, extension office, institute and agricultural cooperative support farmers. In addition, there are some conditions such as the specifications of facilities.

Recently, the population of rice leaf bugs (sorghum plant bug = Stenotus rubrovittatus) in the Northern Tohoku region is increasing because of global warming. The damage caused by these bugs, leads to deterioration of rice quality, which is a huge concern for rice farmers. However, the extent of the damage depends on the variety of rice and the weather conditions. When vulnerable rice varieties such as Himeno-mochi are grown, farmers have to use supplemental insecticides. Additionally, hot summer weather promotes the breeding of rice leaf bugs, thus requires farmers' additional effort. In this paper, "incidence” of the risk and "damage strength" are estimated, based on research in lwate prefecture. On the basis of these data, a risk map is drawn and economic damage risk from rice leaf bugs is calculated. Finally, the efficiency of additional pest control by farmers is evaluated by cost benefit analysis.

Recently, the diversification and introducing hired labor is recommended to the community based farming in the paddy field area. The purpose of this study is to clarify the significance and challenges of business diversification in community based farming corporations. We conducted the comparative survey of two types of corporation, one is trying to introduce profitable crops and hired labor (Y farm) and another one maintains rice and soybean farming (N farm). As a results, the expenses of Y farm was increased by the investment of machinery and facility and wage for labor, however the profitability is considered to improve soon. On the other hand, the expense of N farm stays low, but there is no possibility to increase the benefit under the low rice price situation. Therefore, in order to improve the profitability of community based farming, business diversification and stable employment will be necessary.

This article clarified the actual situation of adaptation of farming in tobacco leaves production after the nuclear disaster in Fukushima. The nuclear disaster in Fukushima had a great influence on the agricultural production of the disaster area. In particularly, the influence is huge that tobacco leaves production area and those production farming. In addition, after a disaster, fallowing instructions and the switch to other crops were derived. Therefore, the farmer pushed forward the switch to an abolished product or other sections. In this way, the production of tobacco leaves products reduction occurs for a complex reason. The first is a structural factor. The second is a farmer switch to another item. Furthermore, farmers showed that the following problems after a disaster, 1. Farmland flow with the aging, 2. Labor force supply and demand including family labor force, 3. Production control such as the soil management.

Regional government supported institutions has been established in each prefecture as a reliable intermediary manager of farmlands to accelerate farmland to business farmers in 2014 in Japan. The institutions (1) rent farmlands, (2) improve infrastructure if necessary, (3) lease the land to business farmers. This paper provides a case study of the institution in Akita Prefecture. The first purpose of this study is to clarify the impact of the institution towards farmland markets. The second purpose is to consider transaction costs changes. The research was conducted in X town, Akita Prefecture, single cropping area of rice production.

The clarification of this paper is as follows: (1) transaction costs for land owners and renter farmers have dropped under the institution's intermediary. (2) Farmland markets is remains local market. (3) Regional government supported institutions would rent relatively favorable farmland, from people who have given up farming. (3) As regional government is outsourcing services to municipalities or agricultural cooperatives, they have born the transaction costs which the land owners and renters have escaped.

The National Farmer Cooperative Law, which took effect in 2007, has resulted in the rapid growth of farmer cooperatives in China. The Nongchaoduijie program(Farmer and Supermarket Link-up) was launched in 2008, which encourages supermarket chains to purchase directly from farmer cooperatives. This study illustrates the fundamental reasons for Nongchaodujie to come into being from three perspectives. Then a case is conducted in order to provide a comprehensive understanding of the current operation status of farmer cooperatives, as well as the role farmer cooperatives have played in the Nongchaodujie program. This paper concludes that farmer cooperatives are not operated in accordance with the cooperative principals after their establishment, while there are operational problems such as the cooperatives' directors holding substantial power over other members and cooperatives' lack of profit distribution mechanisms. Yet to a certain degree, farmer cooperatives have improved the organizational level of small farmers and enable them to compete in the market.

Aim of this paper is to examine relationship between rural tourism project implementation and the status of regional resource. Based on Agricultural Census data 2005, this study focuses on the case of Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. Agricultural Census data shows if a community implemented rural tourism project or not in year 2005. Based on the data, determinants of implementation of the projects are examined by employing Logit model estimation. Main findings of the analysis are the following: 1) community with high rate of non-farmer and youth tend to implement the rural tourism project; 2) some regional resources (allotment gardens, farmer's restaurants terraced rice fields and paddy field at valley bottom) have positive impact on implementation of rural tourism project while others (direct sale places and irrigation ponds) don't have such impact.