The Change of Arable Land Area in Japan since the 1960s and Its Policy Implications

Historic events may have great effects on the statistical precision when long-time series data are used in study.In order to avoid disturbance of historic events on natural law of economical development and its effects on arable change,this paper took arable change in Japan as an example.The results clearly showed that arable area and arable per capita have linearly-decreased all the time.Compared with the result in 1961,only 79% of total arable and 60% of arable per capita were left in 2003.Arable per agricultural labor increased to 1.0870 ha in 2003,more than four times than that in 1961,which is suitable to the rule of conic.Under aid of factor analysis(principal components) and stepwise regression methods,the expansion of industrial and urban land,which is caused by economical development,was the fundamental cause of the arable area decrease;the price fluctuation of agricultural products also led to partial arable retreat from cropping;the loss of arable land,caused by natural disaster,was obviously decreased along with the improvement of capability of disaster reduction and prevention.The reclamation was the most important factor as the cause of the arable area increase.The consolidation and re-reclamation followed.For the economic development in the future,the notion that arable lands loss will be gradually decreased as urbanization rate comes to be stable should be given up.During the process of urbanization,the urbanization is not the primary driving forces of arable loss but economic development.What researchers focus on should be abnormal loss of arable caused by extensive urban expansion and economic activities.Because of the price gap of crops between internal and external agricultural markets,more and more attentions should be paid to the effects of food security and arable change after opening the agricultural markets to the world;some issues should be taken into account in advance,such as whether the policy abandonment of arable land might be adopted when there is little benefits in agriculture under the preconditions that conversion of abandoned arable to builtup is absolutely prohibited.Additionally,the measures to protect and increase arable area should be stable and never be changed as the pressure from urbanization mitigates,because arable is a kind of rare and nonrenewable resource.