JAs' Processing Business

A number of JAs have been implementing food processing businesses with a view to adding value to members' farm products as well as to increasing their revenues. JAs' processing business, which was called "an industry in-between the primary and the secondary," has been developed and diversified in terms of processed items, business scales and sales networks through optimizing the specialty of local products.

524 JAs were engaged in food processing businesses in the fiscal year 2002. This business sector had rapidly grown since the fiscal year 1990, but the amount of total turnover had dipped after peaking in the fiscal year 1998 (at 190 billion yen) and it was 150 billion yen in the fiscal year 2002. The most important commodity in JAs' processing business is potato for starch (38.9 billion yen), followed by livestock products (30.2 billion yen), fruits and vegetables (29.4 billion yen), green tea (19.9 billion yen), and dairy milk (18.8 billion yen).

Commodity-wise Marketing Turnover of JAs' Processing Business

Source: “Statistics on Multipurpose Agricultural Cooperatives” MAFF
Note: "Others" includes flours, fertilizers and composts, feeds and others.

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