A direct payment (DP) scheme for hilly and mountfainous areas has been in place in Japan since 2000. This scheme’s objective is to fill the gap in production costs between these less favourable areas and other agricultural locations and prevent abandoned farmland from increasing. Eligible rural communities decide whether to receive DPs, and half of the DP allocation in communities with DPs is distributed for collaborative community activities, with the remaining half allocated directly to farmers. We apply a difference-in-differences approach to examine the effect of these payments on farmland use. Using a large farm-level panel data set from before and after the payments were initiated, we employ a causal framework of analysis with a treatment group and two alternative control groups. We find that the payments led to a slowdown in the increase of abandoned farmland among surviving farms. Moreover, the payments have a marginal positive effect on the operated farm size of surviving farmers. The results imply that direct payment schemes in less-favoured areas play a key role in maintaining farmland.

中文翻译：

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不利地区支付、农田废弃和农场规模：来自日本丘陵和山区的证据*

日本自 2000 年起实施了针对丘陵山区的直接支付 (DP) 计划。该计划的目标是填补这些不利地区与其他农业地区之间的生产成本差距，并防止废弃农田增加。符合条件的农村社区决定是否接受 DP，有 DP 社区的 DP 分配一半用于社区协作活动，其余一半直接分配给农民。我们应用差异中的差异方法来检查这些付款对农田使用的影响。使用付款开始前后的大型农场级面板数据集，我们采用了因果分析框架，其中包含一个处理组和两个替代对照组。我们发现，这些付款导致幸存农场中废弃农田的增加速度放缓。此外，付款对幸存农民的经营农场规模具有边际积极影响。结果表明，贫困地区的直接支付计划在维护耕地方面发挥着关键作用。