The Trend of Tourist Farms in Urbanized Region along the River Tama, Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture

Urban Farm DB summary

Suburban agriculture around large cities has generally been declining under rapid urbanization, but the detailed development process of tourist farms as a form of suburban agriculture has not been well explained. Taking the right bank of the Tama River as a case, this paper examines how the long-established pick-your-own Tamagawa pear orchards adapted to and were transformed by Kawasaki City's rapid urbanization from the mid-1950s onward. In the right-bank area of northern Kawasaki City, despite rapid urbanization, pick-your-own tourist pear orchards remain widely distributed and draw brisk crowds in autumn, coexisting amid residences, apartment buildings, shops, and parking lots as urbanized land use spreads. The tourist orchards developed after 1928, when the Odakyu Electric Railway opened through joint efforts with local farms, and during the decade after 1956, depressed pear market prices led many farms to convert to the tourist-farm model and become profitable; the orchards currently sell 46% of annual production through pick-your-own tourism and 52% through roadside direct sales, while farms are generally sustained with income from real-estate side businesses such as rental housing, apartments, and parking lots. In northern Kawasaki, urbanization tied to residential development has passed its peak but continues steadily, and the tourist pear orchards are gradually decreasing; the paper states their outlook is clouded by deteriorating farming conditions and difficulty securing successors, prompting a new response in the form of Kawasaki City's tourist-farm policy, which includes establishing citizen orchards, fruit parks, and citizen farms.