Characteristics of Hog Raising Farmers in the Kasumiaura Region, Ibaraki Prefecture

Abstract

Most of the farmers in Hokota-machi, a part of the Kasumigaura hog raising zone, were engaged in small scale hog raising for the purposes of breeding and getting manure. The hog raising played an important role as a subsidiary part of producing such crops as rice, wheat, barley, sweet potato and peanut until 1964. After that, the number of the petty and subsidiary hog raising farmers decreased gradually due to the fluctuations in hog price, so-called pig cycle, and increasing use of chemical fertilizer instead of hog manure. Furthermore, the hog raising farmers have been diversified into three managemental types; 1) hog fattening management, 2) hog breeding and fattening management, 3) swine breeding management. The specialized hog raising farmers have been mainly engaged in the first two managemental types. In this paper the author attempts to elucidate the diversifying processes of the hog raising farmers in the Minamino-area, Hokota-machi.The Minamino-area is located on a part of the Kashima diluvial upland. Most of the Minamino-area is utilized as upland fields, which were cleared forest land and wasteland during the Meiji era. The pioneer farmers combined producing upland crops with keeping livestocks in order to fertilize upland field with manure. As one manner of fertilizing, they started to raise swine. These managemental bases of the swine raising, however, were weak and unstable, and those scales were very small. Therefore, the swine raising in farming management was a subsidiary position. After 1965, the hog raising farmers have been diversified into three types. In the first type, the position of hog raising in the farms has developed from the subsidiary one to the main one and to the specialized one. In the second type, the position of hog raising in the farms has remained the subsidiary one. In the third type, the farmers have stopped the subsidiary hog raising management and changed to the full-time or the part-time farmers producing only field crops. These diversification is related with the differences among the farmers in the existence of farming successor, skill and managemental abilities of hog raising, and the accumulation of capital.Eventualy, the development of the hog raising in the Minamino-area has been supported with the farmers who are dispersed on the upland and held the large scale of upland field possible to be changed to the manure lots, and the hog raising farmers maintainning the relationships with the specialized field crops farmers through hog manure.