This paper is aimed both to examine the effects of developing regional-specific label agricultural (RSLA) products in the development of regional agriculture, and to identify the possibility and conditions to vitalize the disadvantageous areas for RSLA products, in order to determine the effective policy measures for structuring an affluent rural society and sustainable livelihood for rural residents.
The main findings can be summarized as follows. 1) Efforts aimed to increase RSLA products have brought innovative effects in agricultural development and vitalizing regional economy in about 20% of the Japanese rural areas. This also implies that the measures rather than RSLA product strategy are necessary for the remaining about 80% of the areas. 2) Case studies from three citrus areas suggest that the improvement in production conditions and farmers’ incomes is becoming the critical factor of vitalizing rural and regional economy. 3) An analysis of project composition from 1,795 municipalities indicates that a lot of measures aimed to vitalize regional economy and rural society, rather than RSLA product strategy, have been planned or being practiced. These measures should be used effectively and selected carefully according to local conditions.
Based on these results, this paper suggests four measures for vitalizing rural society and regional economy. These are: 1) to promote the improvement in production conditions, 2) to increase farmers’ incomes by improving the performance of local agricultural cooperatives, 3) to introduce farm income improvement policy, and 4) to promote the settlement in handicapped areas by subsidizing residents and improving the rural landscape.