The objective of the research study was to estimate factors in change of farm land area by statistical analysis. The study area covered 47 prefectures in Japan. The hypothesis was that both socio-economic and geo-natural conditions influence change of farm land area.
The results were as follows.
1) The proportions of forest area and urbanization promotion area have a highly negative correlation. Urbanization was concentrated on plain regions because of geographical features that affect urban development.
2) In the multiple regression analysis, explanatory variables were selected in terms of level of agricultural management and urban pressure. It is clear that average farm size, distance from a city, capital equipment price per unit of farm area, and construction price of primary industries related to agriculture, forestry and fisheries per unit of farm area had a significant influence on the change of farm land area.
3) We estimated the strengths of the structural relationships among variables by path analysis. The results shows that, the agricultural income increases as the distance from a city decreases, thereby restraining the reduction in farm land close to cities. However, we conjectured that average farm size is a more important factor for increasing the growth of suburban agriculture which effectively utilizes the geographical condition of close proximity to the city.