‘Changes to agricultural law would derail food self-sufficiency goals’: Nouminren, JAPAN

Japan’s National Legislature (also known as the National Parliament) is currently deliberating on the revision of the Basic Agriculture Law. This step marks the first complete revision of the Basic Law governing agricultural policy since its entry into force in 1999.

These debates are taking place amid supply disruptions caused by the climate crisis and ongoing wars and conflicts – leading to what the UN has called the world’s worst hunger crisis.

Peasant movements in Japan, such as the family peasant movement Nouminren (member of La Via Campesina) argue that these amendments would be counterproductive to the government’s stated goal of improving self-sufficiency.

Since the 1960s, Japan’s food self-sufficiency rate has steadily declined. Nouminren points out that years of gradual liberalization and market reforms have led to greater dependence on agricultural imports. For example, Japan’s grain production fell from 82% in the 1960s to just 29% in 2022. National meat production fell from 91% to 53% over the same period. Similar trends can be seen in other agricultural products (see the graph).

About 90% of the fertilizers, animal feed, vegetable seeds and petroleum needed for agricultural production are imported. If these cannot be imported, the self-sufficiency rate drops to 10%, they emphasize.

They have also pointed out that through amendments Efforts are being made to lower self-sufficiency targets. The responsibility for improving self-sufficiency, the movement claims, is also being shifted from the state to citizens. In times of food crisis, the proposed changes would invoke the Emergency Food Supply Difficulties Act, imposing fines on farmers for switching crops (from flowers/grass to potatoes) and imposing “allocation and distribution” of food to citizens. . During “particularly severe stages,” producers could be instructed to switch to calorie-oriented production (potatoes, rice), with fines of up to 200,000 yen for non-compliance.

The Kishida government’s policy, Nouminren warns, amounts to the “creation of a country prepared for war,” following the “wartime food law,” which prescribes the forcible production of potatoes on farms and the makes the population go hungry by eating potatoes.

While the current Basic Law states the need to “increase domestic agricultural production as a basic principle, and appropriately combine this with imports and stockpiling,” Japan has continued to neglect increasing domestic agricultural production and has pursued further imports and liberalization.

The amendments explicitly establish a clause for ‘ensuring stable imports’ and even call for increasing imports by promoting investment and support to source countries.

On the other hand, as Japan faces population decline, promoting agricultural exports is seen as opening up prospects for agriculture, and a strong commitment to exports is declared. Nouminren disagrees. The government boasts of “more than 1 trillion yen in exports of agricultural, forestry and fishery products,” but the total amount of imported agricultural, forestry and fishery products varies greatly at 13 trillion yen. In times of crisis, relying on exported agricultural products is not reliable at all, they say.

Urgent need for support for young small-scale farmers – robot farms and laboratory meat are not the solution:

The aging of the farming population is a pressing problem: 240,000 farmers in Japan are under the age of 59 (20%), while the number aged 75 and over is 420,000. Moreover, 70% of farmers have no successors. While the government says the number of agricultural workers will decline from the current 1.2 million to 300,000 over the next twenty years, measures to secure young successors have been neglected.

The government’s measures set out in the review proposal include: 1. Using robots, drones and AI (artificial intelligence) in ‘robot farming’ instead of farmers, and 2. Encouraging the public to consume insects, genetically modified/genome-edited foods, and artificial meat.

‘Robotic farming’ without farmers and forcing people to eat insects and artificial meat in addition to three meals of potatoes a day – such methods cannot overcome the crisis.

It only serves to turn food into a tool for corporate profits.

Strengthening price support and direct income compensation: ‘Defend family farms’

To overcome the crisis in agriculture and the shortage of farmers, achieving prices that correspond to the costs of production is crucial. However, the hourly wage of an average rice farmer is only ’10 yen’.

In view of the increasing number of people who can only afford one to two meals a day and rising prices, Nouminren has proposed a series of four points: “price support + price transfer + direct income compensation + government contracts,” demand that the government guarantee incomes that enable people to live in rural areas.

However, the proposed amendments firmly refuse to introduce price support and income compensation that impose financial burdens often seen in the US and EU to cover farmers’ shortfalls, and it has also postponed the price transfer legislation that was actually under consideration must be taken.

Nouminren ironically points out that we are currently in the middle of the United Nations’ Decade of Family Farming. In line with this period, a shift in politics is needed to nurture successors, allow family businesses to flourish and improve the level of self-sufficiency.

Some advocates suggest that details could be included in the basic plan after the revision of the Basic Law, but Nouminren has warned that it will be too late once the revisions cause the goal of improving self-sufficiency to be abandoned.

In a detailed analytical blog and petition on their website, Nouminren has demanded the abolition of the government’s proposed amendments and called for joint action between social movements, political parties and citizen groups, strengthening solidarity between consumers and producers, in order to strive for a fundamental law that truly contributes to the revival of food, agriculture and rural areas. To boost food production, they have demanded an end to massive military expansion and a doubling of the extremely low agricultural budget compared to other countries.