Page 12 - Changing Living Spaces

Satosthi Murayama

100 Canada Denmark
Ireland
Finland USA
Sweden New Zealand
UK Norway
75 Latvia Luxembourg
France Germany
Belgium Netherlands
Austria Switzerland
Over 5 ha. 50 Lithuania

Spain Hungary
Czech Republic
Turkey Slovenia
Poland
25 Thailand Serbia Italy
Greece Portugal
Croatia
Romania Slovakia
India Japan Bulgaria
Albania China
0
Republic of Korea Nepal
0 25 50 75
Under 1 ha.
Figure 1 Farm Size of Agricultural Management
Notes The x-axis shows the ratio in percent of farmland in the management scale <
1 ha; the y-axis is the ratio of the farmland in the management scale > 5 ha. Countries
were selected based on the availability of farmland management data. Source Figure
1 was compiled by original calculation and plotting based on the data derived from
table a2: Agriculture’s importance in the economy and labour force, fertilizer use
intensity, farm size and women’s involvement in agriculture, in Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations (2015).

not disappear immediately, but was sustained until recently. The cur-
rent period of population declines finally began to destroy the tradition-
al peasant economy. Figure 1 is a correlation chart of the ratio between,
in percent, of the farmland less than 1 hectare (ha) and the ratio, in per-
cent, of farmland more than 5 ha. On the left side, you can see many
countries, with Europe and America leading the way. However, in farm-
land less than one ha, there are predominantly many countries where it
is not counted with land for agriculture. Figure 1 shows not only Japan,
but also other Asian countries and Eastern European and Mediterranean
countries such as Slovenia and Italy, which are relatively small landhold-
ing countries.
Small farms cultivating less than 1 ha of arable land do not exist in the
countries that form a group on the y-axis: Canada, Denmark, Ireland,
Finland, Sweden, the United States, and others (figure 1). This book is not
concerned with these countries, but with the countries where such small-

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