Characteristics of social relationships to be effective in maintaining group farming

Group farming will become more important as the labor force in agriculture will become smaller. However, in actuality some growers failed to continue group farming because of the conflicts among them. As the number of growers engaged in other industries increased, the lack of solidarity among the variety of growers has caused conflicts and they have caused a large problem in promoting group farming. Based on "the network analysis", this paper examines the informal communication structure of the growers who have maintained group farming. To characterize the structure, I surveyed two groups in a rice-growing settlement from 1992 to 1996 ; one (S group) succeeded to maintain group farming for more than 20 years, and the other (K group) went wrong. Different from K group, S group had strengthened the cooperative relationship by providing more chances to socialize with one another, regardless of sex, in the group farming management. The characteristics of the social relationships about the members of S group were shown by the analysis of "the central indexes", which pointed to the members' positions in the network. The communication structures were : 1) men, who engaged in the main field work, were hard to be dissatisfied with group farming because they could obtain information about group farming on equal terms, and 2) women, who work as support in the fields, easily adjusted their differences of opinion smoothly when they had some problems to solve in the group community. In the activity of group farming, these two structures drew out each other's merits and kept enough communication among the members. Because of these characteristics, the members' understanding of group farming was deepened and group farming was led to success. The results suggest that the communication among not only men but also women is important for maintaining group farming.