A Simulation Method of Agricultural Land Use about Terrace Paddy Fields

Autor: Kazuko Endo
Rok vydání: 2004
Předmět:
Zdroj: JOURNAL OF RURAL PLANNING ASSOCIATION. 23:29-40
ISSN: 1881-2309
0912-9731
DOI: 10.2750/arp.23.29
Popis: In this paper, I report the simulation of future agricultural land use based on an estimation of labor force as being effective to confirm the realization of land use planning. This research was conducted by planning the land use of a case village. The case village was Yasuzuka town in Niigata Prefecture. This village is in an area burdened with many terrace paddy fields and heavy snowfall. I discuss the requisites and methods for the simulation of agricultural land use in this case village. The future of agricultural land use appears to have been decided by successor behavior and farm managers giving up farming. Therefore, the simulation needed to be based on individual behavior and was accomplished by microsimulation.The microsimulation was composed of an estimation of the agricultural labor force and the cultivated area. The simulation was repeated one thousand times for each household and the mode was selected as to predict the results for the household. Some of the important criteria were as follows. 1) The individual agricultural labor force was set as the farming days and was changed with the occurrence of some event, for example retirement from farming. 2) It was assumed that the probability of some event occurring increased or decreased with age. This probability was determined for each age class from statistical data, for example The Census of Agriculture (and Forestry). 3) The estimated individual agricultural labor force determined the household class of the agricultural labor force. The cultivated area applied was set up according to labor forces for each class from beforehand fact-finding about the case village. 4) All of the household results were summed to obtain the results for the village.This simulation was applied to the case village according to the above criteria. As a result, it was predicted that agricultural land use would be cut in half after ten years. It was also predicted that supposing an increase in successor farming and improvement in the working efficiency would not ease a decrease in agricultural land use.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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