Recognizing the inter-village difference in term of the rate-of-changes of the number of farm households and the size of farmland, this paper attempts to construct a model to find out the factors of maintaining the stability of agricultural production and even rural society in mountain areas. The model takes into consideration the conditions which affect agriculture and forestry such as natural location, the types of various crop composition, the opportunities of off-farm employment within accessible area, the types of diversified agri-business, multiple farming, participation rate in agricultural co-operatives, and meeting frequency in community.
The results show that the above-mentioned factors have been playing an important role for the maintenance of farm households and mountain villages, but in the villages where the public projects for the improvement of the production structure of agriculture and forestry were effectively introduced the variables which relate to the production of agriculture and forestry are more significant than that representing the opportunities of off-farm employment. Moreover, the significance of the variables that reflect the potential of ingenuity of farmers and local leaders becomes more notable, while the influence of conventional factors is declining.