Year: 1999
Type: article
Abstract: IntroductionThis paper points out the failure of Japanese agricultural policy through an international comparison with Taiwanese agricultural policy.More specifically, the paper focuses on a comparison between Taiwanese rice production costs and those in the Non-Hokkaido region of Japan.There are many similarities between Taiwanese rice production and rice production in the Non-Hokkaido region of Japan; the farm size distribution, the variety of rice produced, and the degree of mechanization.It is also well known that the average cost of Japanese rice production decreases with farm size, as Hayami and Kawagoe for example, have shown.１ But Taiwanese rice production costs remain almost constant with respect to the scale of operation as Kuroda has confirmed.２ This paper argues that differing the government policies throughout the process of mechanizing rice production in these two very similar economies is one of the major reasons why we find such a difference in the cost structure of production.The Taiwanese government encourages contract farming, and succeeded in separating the land owner and the tiller.On the other hand, the Japanese government has encouraged large scale tenant farming since 1970, and particularly since 1980, but could not achieve this objective due to inconsistent policies to restrain the separation of land owner and the tiller.Given the unsatisfactory results of Japanese agricultural policy which has focused large scale tenancy farming, the introduction of efficient contract farming would be another beneficial policy option for Japanese rice production in the Non-Hokkaido region.The organization of this paper is as follows.Section II shows some statistical evidence that justifies my assertion.Section III reports the results of quantitative analysis.Section IV concludes the paper with some policy implications. II. Some Statistical EvidenceThe Japanese and Taiwanese economies have many characteristics in common.In both economies the farm size distribution is skewed to the left, and part-time farm households are prevalent after the success of industrialization.Other similarities are found in the variety of rice produced, price supports, farmland regulations, and post World War II farmland reforms.The major objective of land reform laws were to prevent the concentration of farmland towards a small number of absentee landlords as was often the case with the rural villages in Japan in the 1940s.The 1952 Japanese Agricultural Land Law stressed the principle that "farmland should be owned by those who actually cultivate it."The law imposed the upper limit on the ownership of farmland (3 ha
DOI: 10.1086/452406
Author: Hiroshi Fujiki
Institution: Bank of Japan
Language: English
Subfield: Safety Research
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Zero hunger
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1990492601