Farmers urge government to reject draft of WTO agriculture agreement

Japan Press Weekly

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

Farmers urge government to reject draft of WTO agriculture agreement

Warning that the latest World Trade Organization draft of an agreement on agriculture, if implemented, will have a catastrophic effect on Japanese agriculture, the progressive farmers’ association and a coalition of organizations of farmers, workers, and consumers urged the government to reject it.

With the WTO Ministerial Conference starting on December 13, they visited the Agriculture Ministry on December 8 and requested that the ministry take the initiative in establishing trade rules that will help solve global farming-related problems including famine and environmental destruction.

Representatives of the National Campaign for Defense of the People's Food and Health (Shokkenren) and the National Federation of Farmers Movement (Nominren), were accompanied by Kami Tomoko, a Japanese Communist Party member of the House of Councilors.

The WTO draft released by the chairman of the farm negotiating group on December 6 calls for the further opening of markets to foreign agriculture products.

It allows member countries to apply higher tariffs to “sensitive products” (four percent of all -about 100- items, in principle, and up to a maximum of six percent) in exchange for increasing the low-tariff rate quota.

The Japanese government insists that eight percent should be allowed to be designated as sensitive products. However, even in this case, Japan will have to accept an annual import of 1.3 million tons of rice at lowered tariff rates, a sharp increase from the current annual rice import of 0.77 million tons.

The import tax rate for all Japanese agricultural products stands at 12 percent on average, far below the EU’s. Higher tariffs are applied only to basic cereal and regional products such as rice, wheat, dairy products, sugar, and konjac (devil’s toungue).

At the Agriculture Ministry, Nominren President Shiraishi Jun'nichi stated, “If this new WTO agreement goes into effect, it will have a catastrophic effect on Japan’s agriculture,particularly in Hokkaido. It will further bring down Japan’s food self-sufficiency rate. How can we accept such a proposal?”

Sakaguchi Masaaki, the Shokkenren secretary general, stated, “Japan should take the initiative at the WTO in helping to raise the food self-sufficiency rate in each country. Japan’s import of the so-called “minimum access rice” that helped cause the contaminated rice issue in Japan and drove up the international market price for rice must be abolished.”

Kami Tomoko also urged the ministry to speak out at the WTO negotiation table (to defend domestic agriculture), with the changing international food situation in mind. - Akahata, December 9, 2008