In this manuscript, we focus on the Kitamura area of Iwamizawa City to make clear the formation process and the character of agricultural structural fluctuation and its leading players among farm villages in the Hokkaido paddy field zone. The advance of the hierarchical differentiation is demonstrated by such factors as the following : (1) the lower stratum leaving farming and selling their farmland, primarily because of the lack of successors for elderly farmers and the shortage of farm labor. On the one hand, the aforementioned farmland is being purchased by the remaining farmers. (2) a greater number of large-scale management bodies being developed, in order to utilize cooperation of labor within the same village in a new way. Thus the absence of successors and shortage of labor is being resolved by third-party succession of management for large-scale paddy farming. (3) the recipients of newly available farmland becoming these new cooperatives. The future leaders in regional agriculture are those who tend toward the further enlargement of cooperative management entities.

There is a sharp discrepancy between the traditional trade theory, which justifies free trade supplemented by direct payments, and the real world, in which tariff protection is a rule rather than an exception. This is particularly the case with Japan’s agricultural trade policy. This paper identifies an agenda for future research in the political economy of trade policy that addresses such a gap by reviewing the literature to date in and outside Japan. The literature review shows that the relevant research is scarce in Japan but abundant abroad both in economics and political science. On the other hand, the study of the reason why tariffs are preferred over subsidies as a means of income transfer remains insufficient in terms of both theoretical and empirical research. Solving such a puzzle in collaboration with behavioral economics and political science is recommended.

The great achievement of Kondo Yasuo in a double-entry book-keeping system for family farms has been noted in the history of farm accounting in Japan. In this paper we tried to organize his accounting theory from the point of view of accounting theory history. The characteristics of his concept of bookkeeping for farm households were clarified and the contemporary significance and the challenges of his accounting theory were raised. The findings show that Kondo Yasuo's accounting theory has two realistic significances. The first is that it adopts double-entry bookkeeping. Second, it applied to both management expenses and household expenses.

The objective of this study is to develop a typology method allowing homogeneity conditions which are easy to set, and to apply the method to the typology of several types of activities such as visiting relatives' and/or acquaintances' homes, or autonomous activities in Nichinan Town, Tottori Prefecture. The method is applicable, even if it is difficult for users to set homogeneity conditions explicitly. As a result, it has become clear that the numbers of types, which can be set under the same homogenity conditions, are different among the types of activities. The differences mainly depend on the degree of variety of the designated districts.

In grazing dairy management, it is known that there are some technical problems with respect to breeding and grazing land. However for many grazing dairy farmers, it is difficult to apply the current technology about weed control. New technical development about nutritional management on the occasion of feed reduction and management of large-scale grazing land will be needed in the future.

The objective of this study is to clarify the existence conditions of large-scale paddy field farms in mountainous areas from the view point of farmland improvement. The conclusion is that the presence of a certain number of acres of improved farmland in their rural community defines the existence of large-scale paddy field farms in mountainous areas.

Many farming corporations have been established by agricultural cooperatives in order to comprehensively deal with the numerous crises in regional agriculture. These problems have arisen primarily due to the increase in abandoned cultivated land, absence of viable and sustainable family farms, few chances to sell agricultural products, and lack of demand for agricultural products. In order to overcome these difficulties, efforts have been implemented to restore abandoned land to cultivation, educate newcomers to farming, create and advertise farmers' markets as a new shopping experience, and promote the cultivation of feed rice.

In this study, we analyze the life situation of female farming household members in the Tohoku region using Agricultural Census Data. The main findings are as follows. 1) The essential employment structure observed in 1990, which was characterized by many double workers (engaging in both paid work and farming), remains in 2010. 2) In the older cohorts, the number of "mainly engaged in farming" members increased and those who were "mainly engaged in paid work" decreased during the period of 2000 to 2010. 3) The value of sales by the household apparently increases the tendency toward farming by members and decreases that toward both paid and unpaid work.

This paper aims to demonstrate the geographical range of farmland lease contracts through a field study of two large individual farmers in the Nihari district of Ibaraki Prefecture. The distribution pattern of farm fields and landowners is analyzed by the unit of community in both aspects of where the landowners reside, and where they own their farmland. The result of the study shows that fields of both farmers are distributed across 5 to 9 communities, and landowners reside across 6 to 14 communities including other villages. This study finds the differences in distribution such as the case that farmer rent fields in other communities from landowners who reside in the same community, or vice versa.

The purpose of this study is to determine factors that enabled the fast development of a production area despite its new emergence. In this case study, the producers managed the whole organization. Moreover, by utilizing the resources of JA(agricultural cooperative) in some operations, it was possible to construct an efficient system of activities. By this analysis, if there are producers with high management capacity for sales and producer organizations, it became clear that it is possible to form a production area by using both the function of ability and JA.

I focus on agricultural entry into the major food retail trade, showing conspicuous developments in recent years. The purpose of entry for each established enterprise and the reality of the agricultural entry are laid out clearly. I chose the example of an enterprise with a clear vision about why it attempted such an agricultural entry. This enterprise is getting excellent results at a certain level for its first entry destination. I suggest that success also relies on the opportunity for multilateral function beyond agricultural produce supply for accepted regional agriculture.

The objective of this study is to find factors that influence on-farm irrigation facility management responsibility assignment to all households within a community because the decrease in the farming population makes facility management less sustainable. The results of panel data analysis showed that the decrease in the farming population may encourage the communities in mountainous areas to assign the responsibility to all households, while this is not the case in the communities in urban areas. Residences' recognition of the direct benefit from the facility may encourage communities to assign the responsibility to all households, although the facility development may change this recognition.

The objective of this analysis is to examine a measure for effective utilization of urban fringe farmland through an agricultural land institutional change. The change extended a measure decided by zoning. We focused on Machida-city in Tokyo, which created a plan called the (former) Farmland Bank for farmland liquidation based on that institutional change. The programme works as an intermediation mechanism between farmland owners and farmers who want to rent farmland either as existing farmers and new entrants. In addition to this programme, Abandoned Farmland Programmes promoted agricultural land lease and resolved the problem of abandoned farmland.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the socio-economic effects of experience-based educational tourism through a case study on Iejima Island, Okinawa Prefecture. A tour operator, namely Iejima Tourism Association, had vital roles in the expansion and management of the guest-house business (Minpaku). This institution successfully explored unique and effective methods of educational tourism and the guest-house business, thus leading to the revitalization of the local society. Local resources were used in a sustainable way, which gave satisfaction to the guests. It could be concluded that the tour operator-supporting institutions should adopt a management strategy balanced between economic and social aspects.

Environmental issues in agricultural activities are becoming more and more important socially. This study analyzed consumers' evaluation of the environmentally friendly agricultural products using scanner panel data provided by a membership retail store. The data contained consumers' purchase history of Japanese mustard spinach. A random parameter logit model was adopted to capture consumer heterogeneity. As a result of this analysis, it was found that consumers have differences in preference when it comes to eco-friendly attributes. A small proportion of the consumers had high MTWP for organic attributes. Finally it was found that elderly and high income consumers highly prefer organic products.

This study analyzed market positioning of craft beer in the alcohol beverage market in Japan and characteristics of consumer preference for craft beer. The main outcomes of this study are as follows. First, the study made it clear quantitatively that craft beer was independent as a differentiated category in the alcohol market and did not compete very much with regular beer or premium beer produced by large producers. Second, the study proved that craft beer purchasers care about the producer's information, food safety and eco-friendliness.

I conducted an online questionnaire survey of 360 women living in a household of 2 people or more in the Tokyo metropolitan area. By factor analysis using the survey data about vegetable purchase through the Internet channel, two factors were extracted: the first concerns fresh dishes, whether they use lettuce, tomato, or cabbage; the second concerns prepared dishes, whether the use of onion, potato, carrot, or preservatives is heavy. By cluster analysis using factor score, three types of groups were extracted.

The objective of this paper is to gain information about differences in household food consumption resulting from spouses' employment and parental status. The expenditure elasticities in household food consumption are estimated by Engel functions by using anonymized data from the National Survey of Family Income and Expenditure. The main findings from the empirical study imply that the spouses' employment status affects household food consumption because of their serious time constraints. The effects of the constraints on time are weakened by parents' efforts for their children.

The objective of this study is to analyze how rapid economic growth affects food consumption in the urban areas of China. A severe growth gap among areas is often observed due to the rapid growth. The linear approximated AIDS is estimated to obtain the demand elasticities of seven items by using per capita food consumption pooled data for the period of 1995-2012, divided into four urban areas in China. The estimation result shows the expenditure elastic responses of eating-out, and meat and fish consumption. Fish consumption meets the restriction because of its logistics. The function of the market economy in China has been constrained by these insufficient infrastructures.