Japan Press Weekly

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2010 December 1 - 7 [AGRICULTURE]

Rebuttals to Kan’s excuses to open agricultural market

The Kan administration argues that opening the market will be inevitable for the development of Japanese agriculture.

However, Japan’s agricultural market is already wide open. The average rate of tariffs on farm products in Japan is lower than in other countries because successive governments led by the Liberal Democratic Party liberalized imports of agricultural products one after another and increased dependence on imported food products.

The LDP governments reduced agriculture-related budgets year after year and neglected the plight of small family farmers though they were the main providers of farm goods. They, instead, focused only on large-scale farmers and farm enterprises on the grounds of the need to enhance international competitiveness.

The present government of the Democratic Party of Japan is now following the same agricultural policies that the LDP took. The government is seeking a large-scale farming system so that Japan can export its farm products and compete with imported products in fully open markets. However, given the nation’s geographical disadvantages (Japan is small and mountainous), it seems impossible for Japanese farmers to challenge larger scale operations as in the United States or Australia.

Prime Minister Kan Naoto is criticizing excessive regulations of the Agricultural Land Act for preventing young people from engaging in farming. However, what the Act regulates is the acquisition of farm land by business corporations in order to protect farm land from being easily abandoned, being targeted as investment opportunities, or being used for other purposes. Without this Act, all these are possible because business corporations are profit-making entities.

It is the business community that has been calling for efficiency of farming management, cuts in the number of small scale family farmers, and free acquisition of farm land for business corporations, as well as Japan’s entry into the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) in the interest of large exporting and importing companies.

The sustainable development of Japanese agriculture with free competition or an entry into the TPP cannot go together. The Kan government is intending to remove remaining regulations from Japan’s agricultural sector in accordance with the demands of the business community.
- Akahata, December 5, 2010