Pioneering in Japan

Pioneering in Japan David Love In Japan, the problem of matching domestic agricultural development and capacity with the needs of a fast-growing industrial economy is a continu- ing one. A scheme launched 11 years ago to streamline the process of land settlement and improvement today provides an object lesson in achievement through adaptability. Carp flags to celebrate Boys' Day fly from a pole outside a new homestead in the Konsen plain. ©International Monetary Fund. Not for Redistribution Pioneering in Japan OKYO, OSAKA, YOKOHAMA—the T names of these great cities are familiar throughout the world as symbols of booming, industrial Japan. Very few people outside Japan, however, have ever heard of a township called Naka-Shibetsu, which is enjoying a dif- ferent kind of boom, far away from the smok- ing, hustling cities of the island of Honshu. Naka-Shibetsu is on the eastern coast of the snow-capped northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. It is minuscule in relation to Osaka and Yokohama. And its growth and upsurging commercial activity are only indirectly con- nected with the great industrial drive of the south. But Naka-Shibetsu's success is none- theless important to Japan, and to other David Love, an Australian, is a staff writer countries of Asia as well. in the Bank's Information Department. He started his career in journalism with The Japan's Drive in Agriculture Goulburn Evening Post in New South Wales, and while working for The Australian Finan- Naka-Shibetsu's little boom is the product of cial Review newspaper in Canberra, he graduated as a Bachelor of Economics from the a new drive in Japanese agriculture, much less Australian National University there. spectacular than the revolution in industry, but in the long run, perhaps, not much less signfi- cant. It is the product of a new national effort Akan Ranges, with long fingers of spring snow to end a duality in the Japanese economic drifting down its sides, like strips of white structure—the contrast between a system of paper on a blue party hat. Between the two heavy industry as modern and efficient as any- stretches the wide, high prairie of Konsen. It thing in the world, and an agricultural struc- is development that has taken place on this ture still struggling to keep pace with the misty, wind-whipped plateau in the last 11 economy as a whole. years that is largely responsible for the conver- sion of Naka-Shibetsu from a scruffy back- A few miles outside Naka-Shibetsu township, woods village to a thriving, modern country at the top of Kayodai Hill, the prospering town. townspeople have erected a lookout kiosk and set up a rotating telescope holder, and from Eleven years ago a great part of the Konsen here you can look out, on a clear day, around plain was virgin country, wild and forbidding, a vast, 270-degree horizon. To the east, rising inhabited by bears and the wild horses that are from the mists of the sea, you will see a moun- the legacy in Hokkaido of ancient efforts to use tain top at the southern tip of the Kurile island the island as a breeding ground for Samurai chain. To the west looms Mount Mashu, in the steeds. In modern industrial Japan the Konsen ©International Monetary Fund. Not for Redistribution 257 Finance and Development prairie had remained largely primeval, despite roofed barns and glint of metal milking sheds repeated efforts by the Government to have scatter the landscape, and ordered windbreak people move there and open the land to live- lines of spruce and larch bend and rustle in the stock and crop raising. The Japanese farmer, wind. In the fields, black and white Holstein used to the warm rice paddies of the south, dairy cows graze the crops of timothy grass found the northern winters grim and the soil and rye. From a farmers' village school of the plateau unrewarding. Most of all, he farther out the breeze catches and carries up found that axe and plow and animal power the crack and shout of children playing base- were weapons too weak to clear the land of ball. forest and so allow him to pursue settled farming. Even as late as the 1950's, much of the World Bank Cooperates great Konsen plain was still given over to a How was this extraordinary transformation primitive, shifting agriculture. brought about in just 11 years? In the face Today, the dominant theme in the view from of earlier frustration and so much wasted the lookout is that of ordered settlement. In effort, how was the view from Kayodai Hill so the foreground a television tower rises from effectively changed? Part of the answer is the the side of Kayodai Hill, and from the middle changing food demands of the prospering distance comes the sight and sound of a 60- Japanese city dweller. As he achieves better liv- horsepower tractor crossing an open field. Red- ing standards, he moves away from the tradi- japan with Enlarged View of Hokkaido tional rice diet toward high-protein foods— meat, milk, cream, butter, and cheese—the kind of foods the Konsen lands are suited to produce. But the main reason for the change is an imaginative scheme of the Japanese Govern- ment carried out in cooperation with the World Bank. In the early 1950's the Japanese Govern- ment examined the structure of its agriculture and the composition of its imports. It noted that a disturbingly large and increasing propor- Konsen Plain tion of its foreign exchange was being used to import basic foodstuffs. It decided that unless Japanese economic growth was to be retarded by pressure on the country's balance of payments, it would need to do something about domestic agriculture, and it asked the World Bank for advice about what it might do. *-,. v The Bank, among other things, recommended «' ' SHIKOKU an increase in farms devoted to livestock, ©International Monetary Fund. Not for Redistribution 258 Pioneering in Japan particularly dairy cattle, to meet the changing their own for using the power of the AMC to pattern of demand. It endorsed Japanese ideas extend and consolidate their holdings. The of land reclamation and of promoting the legacy of these hopes is on view today from pioneering settlement of areas that were remote the lookout on Kayodai Hill. Much less than and undeveloped but which had productive half the transformation of the plain is due to potential. But it suggested that both the rec- the original "pilot" work of the AMC. The lamation and the pioneering could be made a greater part is the result of the hoped-for "im- great deal more effective by large-scale mech- pact" effect upon earlier pioneers. anization. To this end it suggested the setting up of a mobile, specialist body. Government-Aided Cooperatives In 1955 the Japanese Government estab- Survivors of an earlier wave of pioneer lished an organization called the Agricultural farmers, attempting to win the land by hand Land Development Machinery Public Corpora- and animal power, had been scattered over a tion (now officially abbreviated to AMC). In wide area around the Konsen district for a 1956 the World Bank extended a foreign ex- number of years before AMC reached the change loan to this corporation to help to scene. Like farmers everywhere in Japan, these finance the purchase of reclamation and devel- earlier pioneers had formed themselves into opment machinery which it needed but which cooperatives—institutions which are basic to an was not yet available from local Japanese understanding of modern Japanese rural society sources. One of the first tasks allotted AMC and the Government's policies toward it. (The was to begin carving 48-acre farm blocks out cooperative is a government-nurtured organiza- of the wild Konsen forest. AMC was to carry tion of farmers, combining roughly the func- the establishment of these first pioneer farms tions of a trade union, bulk purchaser, market- to the completion of a house and barn, initial ing agent, tax collector, savings and loan chemical improvement of the soil, the sowing society, commercial and development bank, and of the first year's crop, and the provision of ultimate arm of local government. In the livestock; it was also to provide a network wealthier farming areas it is not uncommon for of roads among the newly opened farms. these cooperatives to employ staffs of up to six or seven college-graduated experts.) Im- When the farms were in operating condition pressed by the initial "pilot" farm achievements they were to be purchased by selected pioneer of AMC, the older pioneer cooperatives of the settlers on generous credit terms, including an region investigated and found the Government initial "settling-in" period during which no re- willing to help them pay AMC to extend exist- payments were due. If this first attack on the ing holdings into virgin country, to consolidate forest proved reasonably successful, then the scattered clearings, and to open new land for AMC would extend its carving-out of farms the younger generation. from the forest. And, in the meantime, it was hoped that survivors of earlier attempts to To this day, although AMC's main task pioneer that area of Hokkaido by axe and force has long ago moved to newer challenges, domestic animal power would frame plans of about 40 of its operators are still kept busy ©International Monetary Fund. Not for Redistribution 259 Finance and Development carving into what remains of the Konsen bush person in 1955 to 37 kilograms a person in on negotiated work for the cooperatives of 1964.

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