Permalink : http://hdl.handle.net/2115/45395

The Japan central conference of agricultural cooperatives proposed a“Two-stage Reformation”which refers to abolishing the prefectural-level federations of agricultural cooperatives and having the national-level federations supervise the unit associations directly, following such suggestion being made at the“1991 National Convention of Agricultural Cooperatives”. The purpose of this paper is to verify the approaches that the Hokuren Federation of agricultural cooperatives (the marketing, production and purchasing federation of agricultural cooperatives in Hokkaido) and unit associations in Hokkaido have taken during the last 20 years to cope with this reformation. As the result of their approaches, the Hokuren Federation and the unit associations in Hokkaido have chosen a rather unique“Two-stage System”. They left prefectural-level federations in place, with maintained independence from the national-level federations, while many other regions abandoned prefectural-level ones all together or integrated them with the national-level ones.