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Influence of Field Water Management by Land Consolidation in Paddy Field Zone in Hokkaido, Japan
Author(s) -
Koshiyama Naoko
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
irrigation and drainage
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.421
H-Index - 38
eISSN - 1531-0361
pISSN - 1531-0353
DOI - 10.1002/ird.2323
Subject(s) - transplanting , agriculture , paddy field , irrigation , consolidation (business) , land consolidation , agricultural economics , water resource management , water table , environmental science , groundwater , geography , business , engineering , economics , agronomy , archaeology , accounting , geotechnical engineering , seedling , biology
The decrease in food supply capability due to the ageing and the reduction of numbers of farmers has been a concern all over Japan in recent years. As a countermeasure by the government, improvement of the agricultural infrastructure has been carried out to concentrate farmland for core farmers and to realize highly profitable agriculture. Hokkaido is the northernmost island of Japan and one of the country's major agricultural zones. Hokkaido's groundwater level control system has been developed in conjunction with land consolidation. Transplanting culture, whereby seedlings are transplanted in a paddy field, is the mainstream technique in Japan. On the other hand, the rate of direct seeding culture, which is advantageous for labour saving as it makes the work of raising seedlings unnecessary, has been increasing. However, variation of paddy rice culture methods will cause changes in water demand. In order to allocate a stable and equitable water use, it is necessary to grasp the basic characteristics of the irrigation plan in the region in the future. This paper introduces an outline of land consolidation in the paddy rice zone in Hokkaido and sets out the factors that have caused the change in field water management. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.