Public capital stocks for improving farmland quality in Japan: comparison between the less-favored area and the flat-farming area
Kunimutsu, Yoji
The capital stocks, including public and private capital stocks, play an important role in agriculture for complementing decreased labor and dissolving per-capita income gaps between agriculture and manufacture. However, there were few previous studies with consideration of public capital stocks, because no data on agricultural public capital stocks were available for econometric analysis. This study aims to estimate chronological private and public capital stocks and to explain chronological changes of farmland quality. The public capital stocks are classified as irrigation and drainage capital for paddy fields or for dry fields, farmland consolidated capital for paddy-fields or dry fields, agricultural road capital and farm village life base capital. Also, the public capital stocks were estimated by each town, 3247 towns, from 1982 to 2004. Results demonstrate that there were great difference in the chronological and regional tendency of the private capital stocks as well as the public one, and such tendency was greatly different even in the public capital stocks by kinds. Second, the agricultural public capital stocks are recently accumulated in the flat farming areas where most of the farmland exists. However, public capital stocks were rapidly consolidated in the hilly and mountainous areas. Third, the public capital stocks, such as farmland consolidated capital for paddy-fields and dry-fields.
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