THE BENEFIT AND EFFICIENCY OF SERVICE ENTERPRISE IN AGRICULTURAL COOPERATIVE

为应对农业合作社的财政危机，日本推动了小型农业合作社初级社的大规模合并。此外，自1992年以来，已经计划将初级社团大规模合并为一个地级组织单位。这意味着日本农业合作社传统的三层结构将向两层结构转变。首先，我们调查了三个先锋案例；以日本西部的JA Naraken、JA Kagawaken和JA Totto rikenhonbu为例，明确农业合作社双层组织的特点和面临的问题。其次，选取鸟取县的一个农业合作社基层社团，考察合并的影响。本文的研究成果总结如下：其中一个重点是合并后的新农业合作社如何重组原地级合作社的职能。以奈良县为例，JA Naraken已经成为一个庞大的农业合作社初级社会，吸收了整个奈良县的县合作社的全部功能。另一方面，在香川县，以前的县合作社联合会保留了它的组织和职能，尽管如此，县一级的合并在2000年完成了，因为两个主要的农业合作社协会还没有加入县合作社。我们观察到鸟取县小合作社合并后农业合作社初级社团的功能和作用并没有很好地重组和重新安排，不能很好地满足个体农户的需求。究其原因，是因为原县域合作社与初级合作社之间的联系再分配过于复杂。解决这些问题需要更多的时间。

To cope with the financial crises of agricultural cooperatives, the merger of small primary societies of agricultural cooperative has been promoted to be wide scale ones in Japan. Moreover, huge amalgamation of primary societies to be one unit of organization in the prefectural level has been projected since 1992. It means that traditional three-tiered structure of Japanese agricultural cooperatives is going to change into two-tiered structure.Firstly, we investigated three spearhead cases ; namely JA Naraken, JA Kagawaken and JA Totto rikenhonbu in the western part of Japan, to make it clear the features and facing problems of two-tiered organization of agricultural cooperatives. Secondly, we chose a primary society of agricultural cooperative in Tottori prefecture to examine the affect of amalgamation.The results of our research are summarized as follows,One of the important points is how the functions of former prefectural level cooperative are reorganized in the new amalgamated agricultural cooperative. In the case of Nara prefecture, JA Naraken had become on huge primary society of agricultural cooperative absorbing full functions of prefectural cooperatives covering whole Nara prefecture. In the case of Kagawa prefecture, on the other hand, former prefectural federations of cooperatives remain its organizations and functions nonetheless the prefectural level amalgamation has accomplished in 2000, because of two primary societies of agricultural cooperative have not joined to prefectural cooperative yet.We observed the functions and roles of primary society of agricultural cooperative in Tottori prefecture after the merger of small cooperative have not reorganized and rearranged very good enough to meet the demand of individual member farmers. The reason why is that the linkage bet ween former prefectural cooperative and the primary societies of cooperative were so complicated to reallocate. More time will be required to solve these problems.