Harvesting State Support provides an analytical focus on the local implementation and interpretation of the agricultural reform process in Japan.

Japan Agricultural Cooperatives (JA), a nationwide network of farm cooperatives, is under increasing pressure to expand farmer incomes by adapting coop strategies to changing market incentives. Some coops have adapted more successfully than others. In Betting on the Farm, Patricia L. Maclachlan and Kay Shimizu attribute these differences to three sets of local variables: resource endowments and product-specific market conditions, coop leadership, and the organization of farmer-members behind new coop strategies. Using in-depth case studies and profiles of different types of farmers, Betting on the Farm also explores the evolution of the formal and informal institutional foundations of postwar agriculture; the electoral sources of JA's influence; the interactive effects of economic liberalization and demographic pressures (an aging farm population and acute shortage of farm successors) on the propensity for change within the farm sector; and the diversification of Japan's traditional farm households and the implications for farmer ties with JA.

This book provides the first comprehensive account of the political power of Japanese farmers. It analyses their organisational and electoral bias, the role of agricultural interest groups, and the farm vote.

This project had origins in 1987 in communication between Yutaka Yoshioka, Chairman, Japan International Agricultural Council, and Kenneth Farrell, Vice President for Agriculture and Natural Resources, the University of California-Berkeley. Projects were proposed in "long-term food and consumption trends" and "a comparative analysis of farm structure in the United States and Japan" (letter from Farrell to Yoshioka, April 20, 1987). Proposals and counterproposals were sent back and forth but the project accelerated after Professor Wen Chern of The Ohio State University learned of the project from Professor Naraomi Imamura of the University of Tokyo on a visit to Tokyo in September 1989. Because of pressing administrative responsibilities precluding an active role in the project, Kenneth Farrell recommended to Professor Imamura that the project be carried out with Professor Chern and associates.

Written by the world’s leading expert in the field, this book examines the evolution of Japanese agricultural policy in the post-war period, focusing particularly from the 1970s onwards when both domestic and external pressures for reform began to intensify. The author explains how the MAFF has safeguarded their institutional capacity to intervene by accommodating both public interest in agricultural policy reform alongside the interests of government in maintaining agricultural support and protection. The book provides a major reinterpretation of agricultural policy, examining how the MAFF’s role as an ‘intervention maximiser’ has been redefined in the face of continued bureaucratic involvement. Making available in English for the first time Japanese policy changes in the post-war period, the book will appeal to political economy specialists and political scientists, and those with an interest in Japanese politics and bureaucratic institutions.