Japan's Food Security

Is Japan's protection of its agricultural industry justified by the fact that it is an island nation, or should Japan drop its worries about food security and end the subsidies it gives to domestic farmers? First, here's Malcolm Cook of the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Australia writing for Project Syndicate. He's hopeful Japan's protectionist tendencies in agriculture are subsiding, and that Japan will lead the way for others to relax their agricultural protections. An editorial from the Japan Times follows and gives additional perspective: 

Japan is showing the way forward for agricultural free trade, by Malcom Cook, Project Syndicate: Last year was a bad one for free trade. The Doha Round was supposed to make agriculture the centerpiece of negotiations... But instead of breathing life into free trade in food, rural protectionism in rich countries seems to have killed the Doha Round... Most galling, agriculture is a small and declining part of these "rich club" economies...

The practical challenge comes from agriculture's two advantages that insulate the rural sector... First, farming is geographically concentrated and farmers vote on agricultural policy above everything else, greatly enhancing the power of their votes...

Second, protectionists have developed populist but logically questionable arguments that agricultural staples cannot be treated as tradable commodities subject to competition. Domestic ... farming is presented as analogous to the military. Just as no government should outsource national security to untrustworthy foreigners, nor should any government permit the national food supply to rely on the supposed vagaries of foreign production. ...

Japan has long been the paragon of rich-country agricultural protectionism. Its electoral system heavily favors rural voters. Farmers are well organized politically, and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries (MAFF) has been a fierce defender of agricultural protectionism. Food security arguments resonate well in Japan, owing to memories of shortages during World War II and its aftermath.

Ironically, Japan now offers a seed of hope for agricultural liberalization. The country's declining number of voters are lining up in favor of cheaper, imported food. Japan's demographic crisis is particularly acute in rural areas, where the average age of farmers is surpassing the retirement age...

Despite decades of government support, the rural sector cannot aspire to feed its declining population. ... The rapid aging and decline of Japan's rural population is fundamentally shifting Japan's approach to food. The MAFF is wistfully abandoning the cherished goal of food autarky. Its latest strategic plan calls for a self-sufficiency ratio of 45 percent by 2015 and focuses instead on "securing the stability of food imports"...

Even more galling for the MAFF's traditionalists, their food security argument is being turned on its head. Leveraging Japan's inability to feed itself, trade negotiators now argue that Japan needs to open up to imports or face being shut out of global food markets by fast-growing giants like China. ... While the logic of this argument is shaky, it taps into deep Japanese concerns about China's rise.

The rich countries face a similar demographic challenge... Japan, due to its advanced demographic decline, is the bellwether, yet other traditional rural protectionists like France and South Korea are not far behind. France now has half the number of farmers it had 20 years ago.

That is good news for farmers and consumers around the world. Rich and aging countries may finally become promoters, rather than opponents, of free trade in food.

Next, from a domestic viewpoint, here's a recent editorial from the Japan Times on this topic:

A viable farming sector,, Editorial, Japan Times: This year will be important for Japan in developing policy for creating a viable agricultural sector without inviting criticism of protectionism from abroad. Among the reasons for tackling this issue is that, although the Doha Round of World Trade Organization negotiations has stalled, the liberalization of agricultural trade is inevitable.

Japan and Australia have agreed to start negotiations to work out a bilateral economic partnership agreement (EPA). Since Australia is a major agricultural producer, abolition of tariffs on farm products under the EPA would put Japanese farmers at a competitive disadvantage in terms of prices.

The Japanese people worry about the nation's low food self-sufficiency rate... Agriculture is likely to become a big issue during the campaign for the Upper House election... This is because agricultural villages exist in many of the 29 single-seat constituencies with election races...

The EPA between Japan and Australia would help Japan secure supplies of natural resources from Australia, such as coal and iron ore, and facilitate export of Japanese manufactured goods such as cars and machinery. But it could have a serious effect on Japan's farmers. ... The ministry says that in order to cushion the damage to Japanese farmers, the government would have to spend an annual 430 billion yen in offsets for price differences between Japanese and Australian products. ...

While Japan faces the possibility that large quantities of foreign agricultural products will penetrate its markets in the future, there is a strong public outcry for raising the nation's food self-sufficiency rate. In fiscal 1965, Japan's calorie-based self-sufficiency rate was 73 percent. By 1998, however, it dropped to 40 percent and remained at the level ... through fiscal 2005. The government seeks to raise the rate to 45 percent by the end of fiscal 2015.

In a December government poll, about 80 percent of those surveyed expressed worries about Japan's food supply in the future because of possible changes in the world situation.... The largest segment of those surveyed, 49 percent, put the desirable self-sufficiency rate at 60 to 80 percent.

To help increase the size of agricultural production units in Japan and thus strengthen overall production efficiency, the government will introduce a new subsidy policy in fiscal 2007. ...

The opposition Democratic Party of Japan calls for attainment of full self-sufficiency in the supply of staple foods. It proposes giving subsidies to every farming household... The Liberal Democratic Party characterizes the DPJ policy as "scattering money," while the DPJ criticizes the government for forsaking smaller farming households and their distinctive traditions. ...