HORTICULTURE IN KOFU BASIN, YAMANASHI PREFECTURE

Abstract

The hortculture in Kofu Basin has developed rapidly after the war. In particular, the expansion of peach culture is remarkable. The acreage of peach culture increased as wide as of vineyards, which has recovered from the depression during the war time and surpassed the acreage and the production of before recently. Most of the orchards are the conv-ersion from the prewar mulberry fields on the alluvial fans, but we can not overlook a fact that some paddy-fields in the bottom of the basin are changing into orchards, too. The changing processes in land-use are as follows: 1) The prewar viniculture area. The monoculture of vine is progr-essing intensively. Even farmers who have a small vineyards became to cultivate vines on the most part of their field. 2) The prewar peach culture area. All the farmers increased their the peach trees and one who have large peach gardens planted vines newly. 3) The prewar mulberry and rice centered area. The mulberry felds tend to change themselves into peach gardens, and the farmers with large acreages of paddy-fields changed their fields into vineyards, res-erving some of them to support their family. The main cause of the development is the change from mulberry to fruit owing to the decline of the sericulture. And moreover, we may add two other reasons: 1) as the result of the land-reformation, the farmers could accumlate capital enough to afford orchards to earn the, cash. 2) the price of rice, which is decided by the government, is far cheaper comparing with the price of fruits produced on the same land.