Glocalization with paradigm shift from fordism to nichism and university social responsibility for sustainable agricultural development in globalizing economy

Abstract

The major concern is to clarify how to cope with the globalizing economy for agriculture, which is strongly characterized by peculiarity as nature. The peculiarity is directly determined by natural and social environments and associated with differentiated development mechanisms of agriculture, which is almost dichotomized between land-productivity oriented and labor-productivity oriented development path. Peculiar agriculture has to face market competition with price in a globalizing economy and requires strong direct linkages with market to survive in the competition. This means the necessity to differentiate markets between Fordism type and Nichsm type of market: the former is a general quantity-oriented market achieving a larger scale of consumption with lower price: and the latter is differentiated quality-oriented market achieving stable scale of consumption with higher price. That market differentiation is directly related to the differentiation of agricultural development paths. Those differentiated producer-consumer linkages indicate comprehensive rural-urban linkages. This is a process of rebuilding the rural-urban relationship in society. In order to achieve the goal, it is heavily dependent on local universities. They have to commit their social responsibility to identify the nature of local agricultural development and the relationship between agricultural production and food markets. Without a direct commitment from universities, the local agriculture and rural community will have no possibility of sustainable development under the circumstances of globalizing economy. This is why the current society is identified as a knowledge-intensive society, and the university is expected as the quaternary industry.