As part-time famer becomes dominant, rural inhabitance have diversified. That requires transformation of regional organization management. Volunteer fire brigade, which is one of the regional organizations are faced with decrease of youth and increase of employees. This paper aims to clarify issues of transformation of Volunteer fire brigade management, through a case study on volunteer fire brigade in Misato-Cho, Akita Prefecture through an analysis satisfaction and burden of its members.

The result are as follows. First, it is necessary to invite participants from outside to regional organization. Second, policy is required to assist the companies that understand engaging in fire volunteer crops activity of employee. Third, supporting not only members but also their families.

This paper focuses on N instant noodles company’s Chinese marketing channel strategies. N company was founded in Guangzhou and Shanghai in the 1990’s to produce instant noodles for sale into the Chinese market. Recently they are expanding their items due to the changes in Chinese diet, and also conducting sales promotions such as testing events. On the other hand, N company faced problems of low profits, because of the various high costs of selling products at Chinese and foreign big chain supermarkets for Chinese business practices. So, N company addresses these problems to expand sales not through “Modern channels” such as big chain supermarkets but through “Traditional channels” such as individual stores, school supermarkets and so forth. To facilitate the collection of bills and physical distribution for sale into “Traditional channels”, N company deals with the firms and wholesalers.

One of the features of the apple production in Japan is that apple farmers have produced apples as luxury foods. However, the demands for domestic apples for processing are increasing. Therefore, the increasing supply of them is desired. In response, the national government has put emphasis on reinforcing the production of processed apples since 2010. Especially, they have been trying to expand orchards which specialized in producing apples for processing. At the same time, such farming is expected to be introduced to large-size apple orchards. They are regarded as main producers in the future, since farming is considered as labor-saving. The aim of this paper is to verify based on the records of real management cases, whether large-scale apple orchards that mainly produce apples for processing can run profitably. The following result were obtained. Farming for apples for processing is highly labor-saving, highly efficient and highly profitable. Because farmers don’t need to work on the trees and can grow them higher, they can get higher yield with lower labor input. The cost level of the farming for apples for processing seems low enough to expect some profitability even at market prices. However, the business size of the farming is smaller for its farm size. Therefore, fixed costs push profitability down so strongly that farmers would not be able to get enough earnings if they rely only on orchards for apples for processing.

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 Yamagata Prefecture. The first purpose of this study is to clarify the impact of the institution toward farmland markets. The second purpose is to consider transaction costs changes. The research was conducted in H② town, Yamagata Prefecture. The clarification of this paper is as follows: (1) Farmland markets is remains local market. (2) Transaction costs for land owners and renter farmers did not have dropped under the institution’s intermediary. (3) Farmland owner who have given up faming renewed their rent contract through the institutions. As a result, the institutions mediated to business farmers successfully on the surface.

This study aims to find the reasons the government shifted the rice breeding from national control to market mechanism and explore the impact and future tasks of the marketization of rice variety improvement in China. From interviews and a review of related materials, I find that overproduction of rice, reduction of labor and arable land, and disasters are related to the marketization of rice variety improvement. The changes in breeding targets and the increasing numbers of new varieties show us that marketization promotes rice variety improvement. However, the high breeding risk, including high costs, significant amount of time, and difficulty in accessing the parent material for rice breeding, prompts seed companies to purchase varieties from institutions rather than breed varieties by themselves. Therefore, the government needs to make further changes to the policy to provide a better breeding environment and clarify the leaders between public institutions and private seed companies.

In recent years, livestock farmers per capita of working time and livestock workers have been increasing by the scale expansion. Under these circumstances, livestock farmers externalizing feed production has also been seen, and feed production contractors have increased nationally. Furthermore, operators with individually managed works at the contractor are present, expect in Hokkaido. In this study, we focused on the feed production contractor A in six contractors in Mamurogawa, Yamagata Prefecture, and clarified the relationship between contractor A and those who individually manage. Contractor A consists of Wagyu breeding farmer M and agricultural corporation G, which mainly produce rice, soybeans, vegetables and "pasture grass." Contractor A has been consigned as "rice straw harvesting." "manure spreading" and "pasture grass harvesting" from farmer M, corporation G and two villages. Among these works, most of the trustee area is that of corporation G. Farmer M and corporation G, are consignors only of pasture grass : pasture grass produced by corporation G, and harvested by contractor A, are sold to public ranches : Akiyama ranches. Moreover, the harvested rice straw is sold to both farmer M and Akiyama ranches. Farmer M expanded the Wagyu breeding scale in one year when contractor A started consignment of rice straw harvesting. In the case of farmer M, rice straw from corporation G accounted 52% of the total amount of roughage it feeds. Also, corporation G gained sales from pasture and rice straw, which accounted for 20% of all its sales. This means that the products are very important income sources for corporation G.

This study was undertaken to clarify the components of consumer satisfaction with farmers markets and the influencing factors of such markets from the perspective of customer experience. In addition, it considered a suitable marketing strategy for these markets. First, a questionnaire survey was carried out targeting consumers visiting “Tanabatake,” a market managed by JA Sendai. Next, a factor analysis was conducted on the survey data and six factors were extracted: “store atmosphere,” “selection and quality of perishables,” “selection of processed food,” “service,” “communication,” and “impression.” Finally, in order to study each factor’s influence, an ordered probit model was conducted using the survey data, with comprehensively satisfy as the explained variable, and each factor score as explanatory variable. The analysis revealed that “selection and quality of perishables,” “communication,” and “impression” influence on comprehensive satisfy, with “impression” being the most influential factor. Consequently, with respect to the marketing strategy for farmer’s markets, it is essential to construct a network among such markets and hold an event to highlight unique local agricultural products.

The urban green space and the urban farmland play an important role in improving the urban environment. However, the farmland in urban have been decreasing in every year. This study attempts to alter the urban farmland, especially Productive Green Zone, to the parkland for keeping multifunction. This paper presents four choices, (1) to maintain Productive Green Zone, (2) to buy for construction Standard Park, (3) to lease for Leasehold Park with payment, (4) to lease for Leasehold Park without payment. The way of comparing to them is to calculate the cost paid by local government. The details of this cost are (1) the amount of exempt the fixed assets tax and the city planning tax every year, (2) the purchase cost of Productive Green Zone, (3) the payment of lease for the owner every year, (4) the exempt tax every year. To create park choices (2)~(4) includes the park maintenance cost every year. The result shows that to keep Productive Green Zone is the cheapest plan. It exempts about 4.42 million yen every year, so this is the most efficient for local public finance. There are two future issues. The one is to draw up strict model of land owner intent to convert farmland. The other is necessary to compare with some benefits: farming, disposing of farmland, and economic value of green space.

In the broiler industry in China, it is popular to purchase broilers from the agricultural and the agricultural cooperatives, we can classify the agricultural cooperatives into three types. [the cooperatives and the processing companies traded as independent entities], [the cooperatives owned by processing companies], [the cooperatives which invest the processing companies]. This paper aims to analyze the conditions among the agricultural cooperatives, the farmers who joined the cooperatives and processing companies. As a result, among [the cooperatives and the processing companies traded as independent entities], there are some shifts in the price risk to the farmers to ensure the cooperatives, and also some that disintegrated yet stabilized the income of the farmers by supplying the production goods and purchasing the broilers at regular price. As was remarked above, the cooperatives in China not only play a role of coordinator between the processing companies and farmers, but they are also expected to invest in the processing as an integrator.

Securing farming organizations’ subjectivity is an important issue especially after the Great East Japan Earthquake. It is because farming organizations have to deal with various changes of their situations and their own management in their reconstruction process. This issue also has a close relationship with creative reconstruction problems. This paper aims to construct a framework for evaluating farming organizations’ subjectivity and show characteristics of the actual farming organizations with subjectivity through investigation in H city, Miyagi prefecture. Judgement standard of subjectivity is constructed based on the following research question: “have farming organizations reconstructed their management purpose or strategy which is consistent with the changes of their situations (such as damages of earthquake, external support or local agriculture’s situations and so on)?” From the perspective of narrative approach, if the respondent of the farming organization can tell its management purpose and strategy correlating with events before and after the earthquake, we can confirm subjectivity in the farming organization. We confirmed subjectivity in 3 faming organizations because the respondents of the organizations can narrate their processes of change in management. They reconstruct their management purposes or strategies not passively but by their own choice. Based on the above discussion, it can be concluded that one of the problems of creative reconstruction is that it can fail to secure farming organizations’ subjectivity because of inadequate consideration for their reconstruction process of management purposes or strategies.