The purpose of this study is to clarify the nature of risk communication in the efforts of safety measures against agricultural machinery accidents, which are a problem in the agricultural production field in Japan. The important role with facilitators and interpreters, the role of the agricultural machinery sales division, and more accurately, was revealed whether the agricultural machinery division of JA Zen-noh and JA Keizai- ren, which is located in the wholesale sector, is assume. The conclusion that various obstruction factors existed, and the role was not enough to drawn out in the situation in which it was possible to become the standpoint theoretically as a point clarified in the investigation result. Therefore, the final conclusion of this study is that it is necessary to create a mechanism that enables the role of facilitators and interpreters.

Farmers in northern area of Laos are extremely poor. In order to reduce their poverty, they are also involved in other side-businesses such as rice liquor brewing aside of growing high value crops. Brewing of rice liquor hasn’t been of much emphasis on introduction of improved technology and capital input. Author implemented an in-depth interview with 10 farmers on the brewing process and characteristics of rice liquor and challenges faced. As the result from this investigation, it was identified that there would be two types in farmer brewing the rice liquor. One is farmer brewing in accordance with traditional method, using a material such as rice and aspergillus oryzae grown by himself. And another one is farmer putting his emphasis on brewing with lower cost, using purchased local broken rice and imported aspergillus oryzae. The important challenges on brewing the rice liquor are unhygienic brewing place, technological problems in each stage of brewing and lower selling price at the market.

Among the “agricultural, forestry and fishery products and foods” of Japan’s export data, the “rice and rice processed products” items are particularly underperforming nowadays. Sake is one of the major items in the “rice and rice processed products” category. In this study, we focus on sake and Japan’s second largest export destination, Korea, and clarify the corporate behavior of sake breweries. We conducted a case-study in the framework of relationships between market structure and corporate behavior. We found that companies can take general pricing strategies from the Korean market. Corporate behavior, we could observe, can be interpreted as a way to avoid diseconomies of scale, and as a way to keep the price of row materials low. This behavior is also playing an important role in realizing products’ pricing strategies such as so-called price cut. This study is meaningful, as it presents a new perspective on the analysis of market structures, which is indispensable when considering export strategies for each export destination.

Large-scale and/or multi-stakeholder (co-operatives with more than one type of member) co-operatives face greater challenges in engagement and effective governance due to size and heterogeneity of the membership. This study examines the relationship between participation in member programs and its relationship to member engagement at a large multi-stakeholder co-operative. Results from a questionnaire survey show that associate members (members without the right to vote) who have participated in member programs are more engaged in certain measures of co-operative governance than non-participating farmer members (members with the right to vote), indicating interventions for membership engagement override differences in member class and regulatory access to organizational governance. The type of member program that members participated in had an effect on the levels of reported change in attitude and behavior, with programs that required regular attendance leading to greater change than those that were one-off experiences. Results from this study show that participation in member programs can enable members without formal governance rights to participate actively in the decision making of a co-operative.