Journal of Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers ISSN:1738-3692(Print) 2093-7709(Online) 한국농공학회논문집

The study is aimed to investigate the features and socio-economic background of farmland consolidation project with medium-sized paddy plot at irrigation associations during the Japanese colonial period in Korea. Most of farmland consolidation works in the 1940s was composed of independent irrigation and drainage ditches along the short side of field plot. However, the number of farm roads at farmland consolidation zone was much smaller than number of irrigation ditches to decrease reduction in farmland area. The standard field plot was medium-sized (about 20-40 ares) in Korea but small-sized (about 10 ares) in Japan in this period. As the result of farmland consolidation works, the unit water requirement was increased to 0.0035 m³/s/ha, and the unit area drainage discharge was over 2.0 m³/s/km² in many cases. The farmland consolidation with medium-sized plot have been spread under the colonial landlord system, where major landlords occupied a large share of farmland and managed corporate farming to gain more benefit. The reasons for spread of farmland consolidation with medium-sized plot may be as follows: high net profit ratio, an increase in land price, and labor savings in rice farming. The farmland consolidation with medium-sized plot in the colonial period showed intermediate features between the farm consolidation with small-sized plot for an increase in land productivity in Japan and the farm consolidation with medium-sized plot for an increase in labor productivity after the 1960s.