隠岐・知夫里島における肉用牛繁殖経営の展開
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概要
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Recently, beef cattle breeding has been gaining a growing importance in many peripheral regions in Japan and is expected to become one of the basic industries in those regions. This paper examines the development process and the significance of beef breeding in those regions by analyzing socio-ecological factors, and discusses the sustainability of the current production systems.In Chiburi-Jima island, the recent development of beef breeding is being attributed to middle-aged people who were motivated to enter the business by the rise of calf prices in the late 1980s. However, some aspects of beef breeding, such as the great fluctuations in calf prices, the need for daily care, and the long periods required for recovering capital, served as barriers to some people who had a desire to raise cattle. Consequently, most of the new breeders had been self-employed as carpenters, plasterers, gasmen, and fishermen. They spend their work time first on their principal job, and only surplus labor time is spent on beef cattle breeding because the principal jobs are generally more profitable.There are three main factors that have enabled the expansion of the beef herd: 1) the effective use of common pasture and the purchase of fodder, 2) the use of labor-saving measures by utilizing abandoned land borrowed from friends and relatives and by introducing new facilities, and 3) capital accumulation made possible by a breeders principal job. It should be noted, however, that these production systems lack sustainability because they are based on an insecure procurement of pasture land, an unstable fodder price and a casual land rental agreement.These facts have both positive and negative implications for the regional economy. On the one hand, beef breeding can contribute to self-employed businesses by adding extra income and an efficient local resource use is realized through local-specific social relations such as relatives and friends. On the other hand, beef breeding as an additional income source may lose its basis because primary businesses themselves are declining.
- 人文地理学会の論文