1.   Agriculture cooperatives, which have political clout, lent heavily to the mortgage companies but are absorbing only a small part of their bad loans to the mortgage companies.

2.   Under the deal, they say, the Finance Ministry agreed it would not impose any more burden on agriculture financial cooperatives.

3.   PWO is considering having agriculture cooperatives nationwide become its distribution centres.

4.   Once, Ishibashi sold his rice exclusively through the local agriculture cooperative, but these days he is selling more of his crop directly to dealers.

5.   He heads the prefectural federation of agriculture cooperatives, which has traditionally supported the conservative LDP.