Family farm issues in the new farm policy

According to the new basic plan on food, agriculture and rural areas in 2005, between 330,000 and 370,000 farm households are expected to be established as "efficient and stable" family farms by 2015. However, many family farms are supposed to face the farm succession stage within these next ten years. However, it seems that farm succession might not be carried on successfully and thus the target of the plan to secure a necessary number family farms will not achieved. In order to treat family farms properly in the farm policy, it is necessary to internalize "family" into "farming entity" and to reconfirm the significance and role of the family for farm management. In this paper, we define the role of "family" for farm management according to five points: (1) Family as investor, owner and manager of a farm; (2) The importance that the pooling function of the family plays for farm management; (3) Family as a main unit of farm succession and inheritance; (4) Family as a tie to society for a farm; (5) Family as a goal for farm management. There seems to be some difficulty in establishing the target number of family farms for farm policy because many families will be in a stage of generational transfer and facing a problem of farm succession in plans time period. So farm transfer issues have been drawing attention in recent years and a certain number of research results have been presented. This research has explored crucial matters concerning farm transfer. This includes investigations into: the succession process along with the life cycle of family members; farm succession and its links with farm organization and development stage; region specific farm transfer patterns; and community supported farm succession. Moreover, international joint research of farm transfer has been organized and has drawn attention to communication skills as a measure of practical support for farm transfers. Perpetuating family farms as one of the farming entities in Japanese agriculture requires diffusing Family Farm Agreements further, developing partnership types of family farms, and establishing legal supports for family farm members such as women and youth, then helping to promote corporate types of family farms. We should consider the feasibility of the application of the Limited Liable Corporation scheme to Japanese family farms.