Effects of Urbanization on Farmland Size and Diversified Farm Activities in Japan: An Analysis Based on the Land Parcel Database

Urban Farm DB summary

Using a nationwide agricultural land-parcel GIS database for the Tokyo and Osaka metropolitan areas, the study analyzed the synergistic effects of distance from cities and urban sprawl on farmland-parcel size and diversified farm activities such as direct marketing, farming experience, and environmentally friendly practices, via OLS and Poisson regression.

Only numbers and their conditions are stored, as structured data — never the source's own sentences. Metric and condition names stay in English, as coded.

• 1,939,162

  parcel count(farmland parcel)

  Policyn = 1,939,162

  region

  JP-Tokyo-metropolitan-area

  data

  nationwide-agricultural-land-parcel-GIS-database

• 1,507,072

  parcel count(farmland parcel)

  Policyn = 1,507,072

  region

  JP-Osaka-metropolitan-area

  data

  nationwide-agricultural-land-parcel-GIS-database

• 50– %

  share within 4km of densely inhabited district(farmland parcel)

  Policy

  region

  JP-Tokyo-and-Osaka-metropolitan-areas

  threshold

  within 4 km from DID boundaries

  note

  reported as more than 50%

• more positive with decreasing distance from did↑ Increase

  urban sprawl effect on parcel size and diversified activities(peri urban farmland)

  Policy

  region

  JP-Tokyo-and-Osaka-metropolitan-areas

  study design

  OLS-and-poisson-regression

  activities

  direct-marketing; farming-experience; environmentally-friendly-practices

Direction of conclusions

Each author conclusion is recorded only as a coded direction per topic. Read the original for the conclusion itself.

• Land tenureSupportsWith caveats
• Policy and governanceSupportsWith caveats

Peri-urban agriculture (PUA) has been widely regarded as a sub-field of multifunctional agriculture for improving the sustainability of urban environments. However, urban sprawl has both negative and positive effects on peri-urban farming, and the research on this issue in Japan is insufficient. This study aims to demonstrate the spatial distribution of farmland parcels in Tokyo and Osaka metropolitan areas and explore the synergistic effect of distance from cities and urban sprawl on the size of farmland parcels and farm-diversified activities such as direct marketing, farming experience, and environmentally friendly practices. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and Poisson regression analyses were used with a nationwide agricultural land parcel Geographic Information System (GIS) database (Tokyo metropolitan area = 1,939,162 and Osaka metropolitan area = 1,507,072 parcels), in Japan, to specify the farmland locations and calculate the extent of urban sprawl. The results revealed that more than 50% of farmlands in the targeted areas were located within 4 km from the boundaries of densely inhabited districts (DIDs). Furthermore, with a decreasing distance from a DID, the urban sprawl had more positive effects on farmland parcel sizes and farm-diversified activities. These findings imply that PUA has a wider presence in Japan, and the peri-urban farmers may be capable of utilizing the multifunctional nature of intensively sprawled urban environments.