Betting on the Farm: Institutional Change in Japanese Agriculture

Betting on the Farm provides an institutional analysis of change within Japan's system of small-scale farmers’ local and regional co-ops, the national union of co-ops (JA-Zenchu), and the Japan Agricultural Cooperatives Group (JA Group), a hierarchical set of organizations and institutions that arose to regulate food supply and support food security goals in the immediate decades following World War II. Though the primary driver of change was the gradual liberalization of domestic agricultural markets, the authors’ focus is on what ultimately determines innovation and a successful response to greater competition and changing consumer preferences. They strive to explain variation in responses as the result of grassroots action among individual farmers and local co-ops in contrast to relative inaction and inertia in the national JA organization. These grassroots players cooperate with, co-opt, and transgress formal and informal rules of the game (including social norms) set by JA. But their relative success...