愛知県における稲作の地域構造
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概要
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Since the land reform, the productivity of Japanese paddy-rice cultivation had risen steadily. However, if we examine the recent state of paddy-rice cultivation, using land productivity as an index and applying the survey to administrative areas, we find that in the regions centred on Tôkyô, Aichi, and Osaka prefectures, and in the Inland Sea area, a tendency towards stagnation and decline has become apparent. In order to clarify the mechanism of this tendency, this investigation is in the form of a case study analysing paddy-rice cultivation in Aichi prefecture.Table 1, in which land productivity is used as an index, shows the condition of paddy-rice cultivation in Aichi prefecture. This table shows a regional contrast between falling land productivity on the Owari plain, and throughout almost the whole of Aichi prefecture, and steadily rising land productivity within the Mikawa mountains. The type of tendency evident in the Mikawa mountains is a phenomenon which occurs widely in the mountain zones of West Japan.As a result of an investigation into the conditions of paddy-rice cultivation in the southern part of the Owari plain, falling land productivity has been clearly revealed. The major causes of this decline are the increase in non-agricultural employment among the farm population, the deterioration of the quality of the agricultural labour force, and the decrease in the fertility of farmland. Where do these causes originate? This question can be answered by reference to the inconsistency between the structural characteristics of Japanese agriculture (chiefly the minute scale of enterprises and the inability to reproduce fertility) and the post-1955 tendency towards a widening difference between agricultural and industrial incomes. From this, and with the inclusion of latent factors, it is possible to forecast that a regional extension of the decline of land productivity will occur within wide limits.Aichi prefecture is exceptinal in that even in the Mikawa mountains, where land productivity is rising and the root causes of decline are inherent and are becoming increasingly more important. Thus, in the future, there will be a strong possibility that production will fall in this area. Even in the examplary village of Kôjo, in Okayama prefecture, West Japan, where agricultural productivity is high, the same forecast can be applied.Is the tendency towards the decline in paddy-rice cultivation connected with the extension of commercial crop production and livestock farming? The survey of the southern part of the Owari plain and of the Mikawa mountains has clearly indicated that the extension of commercial crop production and livestock farming is faced with great difficulties. These difficulties are considered to be the result of the instability of market prices, the low level of producer prices and the limit imposed by the minute and fragmented nature of the farm enterprises. One way to increase agricultural incomes would be to enlarge the area of the enterprises, but as yet, this trend is hardly noticeable.The final analysis comes from what we can empirically discern:- namely that the increase in non-agricultural employment among the farm population is increasing, and the exodus of agricultural labour is continuing.
- 人文地理学会の論文