- 著者
-
八木 洋憲
藤井 吉隆
- 出版者
- 日本農業経営学会
- 雑誌
- 農業経営研究 (ISSN:03888541)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.54, no.1, pp.105-116, 2016-04-25 (Released:2017-09-20)
- 参考文献数
- 26
Achieving economies of scale in rice paddy field production has been a decades-long objective in Japan. Although there have been many studies on Minimum Efficiency Scale (MES) and the merit of farmland agglomeration in rice production, little emphasis has been devoted to the study of organization diseconomies of scale of multi-unit farm operations. The term‘ unit’ in this paper is defined as an undividable unit of fixed inputs such as a set of large machinery. Previous literature suggested that the average cost of non-family farms, such as community-based farms, were higher than that of individual family farms. In agricultural production, moreover, in addition to the organizational structure, seasonality of the production process is highly significant for an efficiency evaluation of multi-unit operations.Our research objective, hence, is to clarify the efficiency difference (level of achievement to the scale economy) between organization types based on organizational management policy. In particular, through a comparison of community-based farms and family-based farm corporations with hired labor, we investigate i) the relation between number of operation units and farm size, ii) the relation between number of units and seasonality, and iii) operational efficiency per unit per day. For this comparative purpose, we calculate a unit efficiency index that includes the number of large machines (combine harvesters and planting machines) per total operating area for each peak season. Our research hypotheses then are i) unit efficiency differs over organizational types (family-based farm corporations are more efficient), ii) the number of units decrease by the length of operating season duration, and iii) operational efficiency per unit per day is not different by organizational type.Interview surveys with nine rice farming corporations, including five community-based farm corporations, with between 30 and 240 hectares of operational farmland were conducted by the authors from January to March 2014. The survey focused on the organizational structure, enterprises, peak season duration, and formation of units. In depth analysis of operation management is conducted for the most unit efficient farm in order to find out its determinant condition.Through this comparative investigation, we confirmed higher unit efficiency of the family-based corporations with employment compared to the community-based corporations (hypothesis i). Second, no clear relation was observed between operating duration of each peak season and the number of units per area (hypothesis ii). Third, operational efficiency is not considerably different either by farm size or by organizational type except for superiority in autumn machinery efficiency achieved by family-based corporations (hypothesis iii). One of the family-based corporations achieves highest unit efficiency based on minimum machinery ownership, simple coordination of operation and flexible family labor inputs in the peak season in spite of less favorable farm land conditions.In conclusion, lower unit efficiency is likely to be achieved by family-based corporations rather than community-based ones even though the latter has advantages in acquiring tenanted land, community labor and government support. The current unit efficiency difference in large scale rice production, therefore, is determined largely by management policy based more on organizational structure than on seasonality and land conditions.