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2008 March 5 - 11 [AGRICULTURE]

JCP proposal to revitalize agriculture

Akahata editorial

Farmers are complaining, “The current rice price is so low that we can no longer keep on farming.”

Concerned consumers are saying, “We want safe domestic farm products, but we often have no choice but to consume imported farm products.”

Both farmers and consumers are anxious about the future of Japan’s food and agriculture.

The Japanese Communist Party on March 7 published an “agriculture revitalization plan” entitled, “Shift to an agricultural policy that aims to increase the food self-sufficiency rate and enables farmers to farm without anxiety.” This is a proposal with which to face up to the serious agricultural crisis in our nation and directly address public concerns.

The first comprehensive policy in 13 years

The JCP presented a comprehensive policy on food and agriculture for the first time since 1995. JCP Chair Shii Kazuo said at a news conference, “Japan’s food self-sufficiency rate has decreased to just 39 percent. We are experiencing a profound crisis in the nation’s food and agriculture system and a drastic change in the situation surrounding food supplies, both in Japan and abroad.”

The JCP policy proposal is timely in that it corresponds to the rapidly changing situation.

The Liberal Democratic Party government has reduced domestic food production in line with a policy opening the Japanese market to foreign products. It has continued to depend on foreign food as dictated by the United States, discarding small- and medium-sized family farmers, thereby discouraging priceless successor farmers from staying on the farm. The JCP in its “agriculture revitalization plan” points out that the LDP agricultural policy is to blame for the present debacle.

The recent rise in the price of food products and animal feed made from corns, soybeans, and wheat are structural. This makes it untenable for Japan to continue to depend on foreign food sources. We can no longer stand idle in the face of the critical situation in which the country’s food self-sufficiency rate has fallen as low as 39 percent. It is for this reason that the JCP “agriculture revitalization plan” stresses the need to review past agricultural policies and seek viable strategies to revitalize Japanese agriculture.

The 4-point proposal puts emphasis on the issue of raising the food self-sufficiency rate as Japan’s main national policy and gives priority to raising the rate to at least 50 percent.

The proposal calls for: (1) Increase in farmers’ income and price support systems with the aim of ensuring the development of a sustainable agriculture system; (2) support for family farmers in maintaining their farming operations and conservation of farmland by training and developing successor farmers, including those of large-scale farmers; (3) efforts to establish trade rules that secure “food sovereignty” by maintaining and strengthening safeguards on borders, including tariffs; (4) establishment of “food safety” and revitalization of local agriculture through increased farmer-consumer cooperation.

The proposal calls for measures which have been newly developed based on the needs that the JCP seeks to realize by opposing the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s anti-farmers agriculture policy and by developing activities in cooperation with farmers and consumers.

For example, the proposal clearly defined the relation between the price support system aimed at securing prices and the income support system for farmers as a system based on direct compensation for farmers according to acreage regardless of output.

In order to help to solve farmers’ financial crisis and to encourage them to continue to work on the farm, the proposal calls for measures to combine the price support system in proportion to the sales of products and the income support system.

Concerning the price of rice, the JCP in 2007 proposed a support system that would ensure a price of 18,000 yen per 60 kilogram as a national average.

Regarding the problem of successor farmers, the proposal includes the important role of small- and medium-scale farmers and highly evaluated the role of large-scale farmers and communities that agree to support farming without owners at their local sites.

From the viewpoint of securing “food sovereignty”, the proposal appealed to maintain and strengthen safeguards at border entry points, including tariffs.

The JCP clearly expressed its opposition to free trade agreements with other countries if they go against the national interest.

Let’s spread 4-point proposal to the public widely

We will do our utmost to have our agriculture policy be known to the broad spectrum of the public in order to spread the movement and increase calls for the protection of food and agriculture.
- Akahata, March 11, 2008