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| Japan Agriculture Group Execs Protest TPP |
The
Japanese city of Narita is best known to the outside world for its
major airport that serves Tokyo, the nation's capital city.
Narita is also a rural area of Chiba Prefecture, however, with a long tradition of rice farming.
Toward
the end of the summer, Narita's rice farmers gather to pray for
bountiful harvests. They dance, play music and ride elaborate festival
carts. From afar, the wagons appear to glide through a sea of lush green
paddy fields as villagers pull them down Narita's placid country lanes.
This year, some farmers feel that these traditions are in danger of disappearing.
Japan
is planning to join the Transpacific Partnership, or TPP. The
government claims the country has begun to emerge from more than two
decades of economic stagnation, thanks to heavy stimulus spending. It
hopes that deregulation, including liberalizing trade, will help
economic growth over the long term.
But rice farmer and local activist Takeshi Ogura says entering into the TPP would be a bad deal for Japan.
"Japanese
agriculture is pretty costly," Ogura says, "so we don't want the
government to treat food as a commercial business. We want it to protect
our food sovereignty."
To be sure, the issue of Japanese agriculture carries some weighty symbolism.
But
the TPP would also liberalize insurance, automobiles and other
industries that employ more people and account for bigger chunks of the
Japanese economy.
The TPP includes 11 nations bordering on the Pacific, and its members account for around 40 percent of global trade.
Ogura
is very proud that he grows his own food, and that he lives in a
community that celebrates this tradition. He says that joining the TPP
would threaten his way of life.
"The
farmland and rice farming is at the core of our culture," he says.
"They are linked to this culture through community festivals like this
one. But if we stop cultivating the rice, this culture will be
destroyed."
The
solidly-built, more than 60-year-old Ogura is a pretty typical specimen
of Japanese yeomanry. He farms less than 25 acres of land and has to do
sideline jobs to make ends meet. His children are not very enthusiastic
about following in his line of work.
In recent elections, Ogura voted for the Communist Party of Japan.
Actually,
he confides, he's no Marxist. It was a protest vote, he says, to show
that he was fed up with the main political parties, because they refuse
to stand up and oppose the TPP.
"They
pretend to listen to us," he says. "Especially at election time, they
make sympathetic faces, and they're kind of helpful. Some of the
candidates promised to oppose the TPP. But they voted for it in
Parliament. They really broke their promise."
Ogura's
uphill struggle against the TPP reminds him of another local rice
farmer and village chief by the name of Kiuichi Sogoro.
In
1653, Sogoro traveled from Chiba to Edo, then Japan's capital, to
petition the ruling Shogun to ease crippling taxes on local farmers. At
the time, this was illegal, and the Shogun had Sogoro and his four sons
beheaded for their impudence.
But
the Shogun also reduced the taxes, inspiring local farmers to build a
temple in Narita and hold an annual festival to commemorate Sogoro's
courageous sacrifice.
Today,
Japanese rice farming is protected by a politically powerful
agricultural lobby, and import duties of more than 700 percent.
It is also the least efficient farm sector among the developed economies.
Jesper
Koll, JP Morgan's Director of Research in Tokyo, argues that Japan can
get out of this predicament by having fewer people working on bigger
farms, and growing luxury food products for export.
"If
Mr. Ogura were to switch to something called 'Koshi-Hikari,' which is
the Lexus brand of rice," he says, "he could sell it for eight times
what he can sell it in Japan to department stores in the People's
Republic of China."
And joining the TPP, he adds, would allow Japan to import cheaper foreign rice, and that would save consumers money.
Takeshi Ogura says grimly that maybe the government will put off joining the TPP, but he seems resigned to the final result.
"The
only reason we struggle on like this is that we have these ancestral
lands. We've got to keep them in the family," he says. "But if the rice
prices go down, that's the time I'll finally have to abandon the land.
We're just at the brink right now."
To really understand this, there is a subtext not clearly stated by NPR
that you will need to know. Rice in Japan costs $20-$30 per lb. The
reason for this is that the rice farmers in Japan have what we would
call a cartel (known as Japan Agriculture or JA) or trust that sets pricing. This has been tolerated because Japan's rice farmers are a protected class by politicians looking to buy their votes. Because the Japanese government supports the cartel, Japanese consumers have little choice.
Nonetheless,
the average Japanese household has been switching to foreign rice since
the "bubble burst" and Japan began allowing foreign food imports in
quantity. California and other rice are now generally used for
day-to-day consumption, despite tariffs that make it 7 or 8 times as
expensive as it should be. I'm not going to speak to whether this is
right or wrong, just sharing the background, as I think any argument,
such as those making pro-organic, anti-GMO arguments, needs to
understand this context. Where in the West people may contend with a price
differential of 20-30% for organic vs. GMO, the Japanese are dealing
with something on a completely different pricing level.
Dallas Brincrest
