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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Article
Modeling Farm Management Modernization: Case Study of Japanese Rice Farming Corporations
Author(s)
Yukio Kinoshita1 and Nobuo Kimura2
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DOI:10.17265/2161-6264/2016.05.004
Affiliation(s)
1. Department of Food Production and Environmental Management, Faculty of Agriculture, Iwate University, Morioka, Iwate 020-8550, Japan
2. Emeritus at Iwate University, Morioka, Iwate 020-8550, Japan
ABSTRACT
While conventional family-owned and family-operated farms remain the
most common structure, the number of Japanese agricultural corporations has
increased in recent years as a result of
changing policies. Some of them are possibly starting to adopt
modern corporate management practices to remain viable in a more competitive
environment. However, changes in the business structure have not always been
accompanied by changes in farm management practices. This study represents a
theoretical and empirical investigation into farm modernization practices to provide
perspective and recommendations to enhance farm business. Various aspects of
farm modernization were considered, including temporal, economic and functional
modernization. Critical elements of farm modernization were examined using a
structural equation model of surveys, wherein questionnaires were
delivered to 2,260 agricultural corporations across Japan in 2014 and 2016,
generating 669 usable responses from rice farming corporations. Overall, these
corporations demonstrated moderate degrees of modernization, indicating that
they have not yet completely transitioned from conventional management styles
to modern corporate management and that the farm-household complex system still
exists for many of them. It was also found that farm modernization is significantly
affected by both production and business management systems, although it was
unclear whether a farmer’s managerial capabilities were critical for farm
modernization. The findings of this study indicate that current farming
corporations may benefit from incorporating additional modernization practices.
The analytical framework and results will help farmers to better understand
their management practices and can be used to provide ideas for policy
development to promote
competitive farm businesses.
KEYWORDS
Farm business, farming corporations, modernization of management, structural equation model.
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