The Kamiina region of Nagano prefecture is famous for having developed two local agricultural systems : the Miyada and the Iijima. The Miyada system involved 1) contracting operations that shared machines and that were run by “collective operations organizations,” although the contracting organizations in recent years have been integrated into village‒scale legal entities ; (2)land use planning arranged on a village scale, and 3) a rent system in which fees were not dependent on the type of crop involved. The Iijima system, by contrast, refers to a system in which contracting organizations are based on former administrative jurisdictions that were of a larger scale than individual communities.
This article aims first to identify the “Kinki‒type hilly‒ and mountainous farming area” in order to integrate the conventional classifications of agricultural region types as either “Tohoku‒type” or “Kinki‒type” with the features described as near‒urban, flatland farming‒village, or mountainous. The second aim of the article is to clarify the trajectories of these organized management entities at the sites under examination. The analysis of both questions is based on the methodological premise that a region’s particular agricultural structure and its development are basically determined by rural labour market conditions. The authors also take the effects of topographical elements into account.
The findings are as follows. At the sites under examination, actors in crop production tend to converge with the organized cooperative management entities, but they are divided into two types : “nucleus” and “satellite”. The “nucleus”‒type entities, as leaders in local agricultural productivity, are managed in part the young‒ and middle‒aged members who enjoy relatively good working conditions equivalent to those of non‒agricultural industries in the same area, but also by workers who do simple tasks and whose working conditions are more precarious. This structure enables the entity to generate sufficient income for its members.
The “satellite”‒type entity, by contrast, has as its mission the maintenance of agricultural lands including those whose condition is disadvantaged relative to the district. It is hard for it to provide adequate working conditions for its members. For this reason, this type of entity tends to be run by elderly members who are dedicated to contributing to their localities, and who, as retirees from non‒agricultural work, already receive good pensions.
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