In this paper, a structure analysis of the roughage supply chain in the United States and Japan was conducted with a focus on the Japanese Agricultural Cooperative Group. While roughage production has decreased in the United States, its export to the United Arab Emirates and China has expanded since the late 2000s. As a result, the sales price of roughage in the United States has increased dramatically. Under these circumstances, the Japanese Agricultural Cooperative Group made a major capital investment in roughage production and distribution in the United States. Based on the effect of the scale merit of production, the Japanese Agricultural Cooperative Group enhanced vertical coordination and made efforts toward cost reduction.

The purpose of this study was to assess the potential for widespread use of bioethanol-blended gasoline in the rental car market for tourists visiting Okinawa, Japan. A choice modeling approach (a random parameter logit model) was used to quantify the impact of the information on welfare change associated with changes in vehicle type, locally generated energy label, and prices attributes to a sample of Okinawa tourists. The results suggest that tourists have a more positive perception of cars fueled by bioethanol and electricity compared with those fueled by gasoline. The valuation of vehicles fueled by bioethanol was especially high compared with those fueled by electricity. Vehicles using bioethanol made from Okinawa-grown sugarcane and electricity generated from wind farms in Okinawa also received higher valuations. A broad range of tourists had a positive perception of vehicles fueled by bioethanol produced in Okinawa. These results suggest the potential for widespread use of bioethanol among tourists visiting Okinawa, and thus an expansion of clean energy owing to a view toward “local production for local consumption”.

Recently, land transactions have been activated in rural Cambodia under the rapid economic growth, reflecting the increase in land disposal by emigrated farmers. However, it is not easy to generalize the direction of agricultural landholdings, because transfer of agricultural land ownership depends much on local agricultural situation as well as inheritance system. This paper examines ten-year changes in landholdings of two rice-growing villages, namely, one in agricultural and another in suburban area. It also analyzes the determining factors for the changes, taking equal inheritance system of the country into account. The results showed no significant change in the distribution of farm shares by size in the agricultural village, but significant overall downsizing in the suburban village. The most crucial factor for the decrease was land transfer through inheritance in both villages. In agricultural village small-size farmers bought agricultural land, compensating the decrease, but these land purchases did not result in the appearance of large-size farms. In conclusion, as far as two surveyed villages were concerned, the landholdings of farm households are being pressed to decrease because of equal inheritance system.

In Korea, with the retirement of baby boomers from companies, the number of farmers returning from urban to rural lifestyles is increasing. In Japan, although it is imperative that such returning farmers establish friendly relations within their rural communities, little research has been conducted to date regarding the regional social relationships between returning and local farmers in Korea. The aim of the present study was to clarify both the characteristics of farmers returning to farming and the social relationships of those farmers with their rural communities. The findings showed that returning farmers can be classified into two types according to the level of their income from farming. Returning farmers who have a higher agricultural income tend to have had stable employment in their urban lives and to be able to use their skills from their previous careers to achieve stable farm management. On the other hand, returning farmers with lower agricultural income tend to have had unstable employment in their urban lives. These types of farmers tend to utilize urban-to-rural migration as a type of safety net because they cannot easily acquire farmland and housing assistance because of loose regulations in regard to farming status. The findings from this study show that returning farmers predominantly tend to form relationships with other returning farmers rather than with local farmers. In particular, for the returning farmers that choose to undertake urban-to-rural migration because of the fatigue of human-to-human interaction, cultivating new relationships is often a type of stress to be avoided. In addition, because of the knowledge sharing among peers made possible by the Internet, there is less of a need for returning farmers to reach out to local farmers to obtain know-how in regard to how to farm effectively.