ABSTRACT
Japan's cattle subsector, along with other livestock production subsectors, has changed as radically and quickly as the general farm structure described in Chapter 1. Most dramatic of all has been the decline in number and size of farms with beef cattle, as they fell from 1.4 million in 1965 to 315 thousand in 1984, a 10.5 percent annual average rate of decline during 1965-1975, and a 4.4 percent annual decline since then (Table 3.1). Farms with swine dropped from 702 thousand in 1965 to 92 thousand in 1984, while farms with broilers declined from 20 thousand to 7 thousand over this same time period. That rate of decline was 8.4 percent annually during 1965 to 1975 and 6.5 percent annually since 1965.
