著者

塚田 秀雄

出版者

人文地理学会

雑誌

人文地理 (ISSN:00187216)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.23, no.3, pp.231-269, 1971

---

At the Sarobetsu field, the most northern part of Hokkaido, development had been disturbed and delayed by some natural and economical factors: too short and insufficient time for crop growth owing to the cold temperature, distribution of the acid peat deposits which are hard to drain off, and vast sheet of water caused by flood and other disasters at the thawing season are the former factors; its geographical location of being too far isolated from the market is the latter one. The existing farm production at its environs was also extremely dull. At the end of the World War II, in acting on the Urgent Development Project, the total number of farmers, who had settled only in the comparatively rich areas, had amounted to 433 houses. Yet it decreased to 176 houses in 1968, In this interim, about 3, 000ha of field were cleared to be arable and at present each farmer's cultivable land counts 17.4ha. It had been changing from the self-sustaining agriculture type, which was held until 1960 in putting stress on cultivation of oats and potato, into the mono-dairy farming management in the form of multi-cows raising at the meadow.Originally, it was aimed to start as the dairy farming type management, As it is easily observed from the circumstance that the development investment had just ultimately set out in full scale since 1961, the unfavourable condition, which was brought about by the scanty reclaimant administration and its retarded promotion, made each dairy farmers, with insufficient capital, have to find themselves difficult to enlarge their management under the heavy charge of the accumulated, unproductive debt. After the completion of the short-cut of the Sarobetsu river in 1969, the arable area expanded in size, and the land was considerably improved, yet the total farmers number still now does not cease from decreasing, owing to the fact that the faicilitating measures of disengagement from the agriculture had been putting in motion as well as to the essential shortage of the enlargement fund. Before 1965, farmers' desentations, for the most part of them, took place at the casual disaster as a sort of turning-point on the impedimental hot bed brewed by the accumulated debts. Nowadays, it is considered as the outcome of the farmers class differentiation which has been recently extremely accelerated; and at the same time it reflects the promotion of the new measures for encouragement of the reclaimant areas.As for the remaining farmers, the authority's misguidance in the past distorted their rationalization of agricultural management; for instance, the underestimation of target figure of the breeding cows had inevitably invited the inadequate distribution of arable field. Furthermore, it indicates a conspicuous turn for the worst management accounts such as the enormous debt which came out from the too hurried accomodation to the multi-cows breeding system and the sudden swelling up of the fodder cost.The Agricultural Cooperative Society had greatly contributed to the expansive trend of the farm management in fostering common use of heavy agricultural machines and implements. Nevertheless, on the other hand it has fallen down to a mere profitable corporation, alienating from the farmers, upon a pretext as "sound management" of the cooperative itself, in following suit after such a lucrative line of policy: preferential treatment for the upper-class, discarding of the lower-class. Its attitude denotes the inseparable adhesion to the dairy and fodder capitalism.In summing up, after the end of the World War II the reclaimant farmers could at last manage to fix the mono-dairy farming management against the harsh natural condition, yet the trend of the reclaimant policy as well as the dairy farming measures had been consistently affecting as the primary factor the way they should be in this area.