Resumen de The contribution of land exchange institutions and markets in countering farmland abandonment in Japan
Junichi Ito, Mari Nishikori, Mami Toyoshi, Hart Nadav Feuer
Japanese agriculture has stagnated since the late 1980s, setting in motion a steady process of farmland readjustment. The notable consequence is an increase in the number of people who quit working on the land and a concurrent decline in cultivated farmland, a process which is often balanced by the development of land rental markets. However, since the total areas of rented land and abandoned farmland have increased in parallel, the contribution of land rental as a countervailing force may be underappreciated. And indeed, a cross-sectional observation paints quite a different picture: a negative correlation between the land rental ratio and the farmland abandonment ratio at the prefecture level. Our econometric analysis suggests that it is not so much farm households but rather non-farm household entities that are deeply involved in the appearance of this relationship over the past two decades. In particular, non-farm household producers play an important role as lessees not only by facilitating land market development but also by pre-empting farmland abandonment. Land-holding non-farm households, another relevant group of actors, are significant contributors to the supply side of farmland but their land also accounts for around half of the total abandoned area. Our analysis also offers unambiguous evidence that a former institution, namely Landholding Corporations, serve an intermediary role in facilitating the exchange of land use rights. However, although these corporations were expected to help reverse farmland abandonment, the limited resources granted by the government tend to make them averse to the kind of risky transactions that are often associated with promoting neglected or unfavorable land.
