agri_reform

Japan Press Service Co., Ltd. is the only news agency providing information of progressive, democratic movements in Japan

JCP demands a farm policy that increases food self-sufficiency rate

The Japanese Communist Party opposes an agricultural reform bill that will discard most farming households as being "inefficient" and calls for a sound agricultural policy to protect family farms and increase the food self-sufficiency rate.

The bill submitted to the current Diet session by the Liberal Democratic-Komei government will replace the present price-support system applicable to all farmers who produce and sell rice, wheat, soybeans, sugar beets, and certain type of potatoes with a new system to subsidize only large-scale farms and incorporated organizations based on their past record of large-scale production.

Regarded by the government as a drastic review of post-war Japan's agricultural policy, the bill will deal a heavy blow to the nation's agriculture.

On May 15, the JCP Dietmembers Group held a news conference at the Agriculture Ministry and criticized the bill for further devastating Japanese agriculture and farming villages and for further holding down the food self-sufficiency rate.

The JCP presented its counterproposal to revitalize Japanese agriculture, not differentiating farm management based on scale but valuing all working farmers.

The JCP counterproposal calls for guaranteeing the product price combined with income compensation for farmers in order to encourage farm production, and calls on farmers and consumers for cooperation in establishing an agricultural policy that will give hope to the successors of farming households and increase in the food self-sufficiency.

Criticizing the government's "structural reform" plan for removing small- and medium-sized farming households as recipients of government subsidies, JCP House of Councilors member Kami Tomoko and JCP House of Representatives member Takahashi Chizuko expressed their determination to scrap the bill and to work hard to increase the food self-sufficiency rate in cooperation with farmers and consumers.

The government bill was submitted in response to the strong demand of the United States for Japan to fully open its farm products market and Japanese business circles that are seeking an increase in exports of industrial products and an expansion of investments in return for an increase in imports of foreign farm products.
- Akahata, May 16 and 17, 2006