The Development of Diary Farming in Grassland Areas and Governmental Policy for Dairy Farming Regions and the Environment in Hokkaido(REPORTS AND DISCUSSIONS AT THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE SOCIETY IN 1998: Regional and Environmental Polices under the New Agricultural Policy and Agriculture in Hokkaido: Focus on Upland and Dairy Farming)

Hokkaido's dairy farmers have enlarged their farm sizes significantly while reducing labor requirements. This enlargement was possible because of the introduction of labor saving techniques such as machinery for harvesting roughage, facilities for managing cows, group work organizations for harvesting roughage, a dairy farm support system and feed concentrates. Despite these changes, Japan's milk production costs have become the highest in the world. The reason for this is the typical management system of keeping cows in sheds all year round while using a land system where farmers raise grass and fodder crops on scattered parcels of land. This also results in manure piled around the sheds that pollute rivers and underground water sources. The way to resolve these problems is to adopt a farm system based on unit land and an intensive grazing system. This is a strategy that can be adopted from the system used by the agricultural investment company in New Zealand