Mainichi Daily News (Japan) / February 27, 2001, Tuesday
A governmental panel on farm management, formed by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries at the behest of the Liberal Democratic Party, plans to compile an outline recommending new farm management policies by August. The outline could mark a major watershed in Japanese agriculture because it is expected to encourage that a distinction be drawn between full-time and part-time farmers for the first time.
Among the advanced industrialized nations, the trend has been to shift away from price supports and toward policies which supplement farmers' incomes. And under the new Fundamentals of Agriculture Law, Japan has also begun to move in the same direction.
In short, the government is now inclined to allow market principles to set the prices of agricultural goods. However, since agricultural prices are at the mercy of Mother Nature, the government favors a new policy that will secure stable food supplies by supplementing farmers' incomes when they are harmed by price swings.
Japan currently extends support to farmers based on the types of crops that they cultivate. Farmers who grow rice, for example, benefit from an income insurance scheme which compensates them when prices dip below the average for the previous three years.
However, due to plunging prices caused by surpluses and rapid increases in agricultural imports, the crop-based approach is no longer sufficient to guarantee stable incomes to farmers. Full-time farmers have been especially vulnerable to recent market developments.
The government hopes to provide relief by implementing a new policy that would focus on the nearly 400,000 households that engage in farming on a full-time basis or derive more than half of their income from agricultural activities.
The new policy is in part a response to the surpluses created by crop-based compensation schemes, which did not differentiate between full-time and part-time farmers, and tended to promote overproduction of agricultural goods.
But numerous obstacles will have to be overcome to insure the success of the new approach. While it is an admirable goal to focus on the most efficient and stable producers who are dedicated to agriculture, the rub is politics. Diet members affiliated with the so-called agriculture policy tribes have long relied on residents of farm villages, the vast majority of whom are part-time farmers, for votes.
What standards will the government employ to winnow down the more than 3 million farming households to the most dedicated 400,000 who will qualify for compensation? And the politically powerful agricultural cooperatives are expected to resist any attempt to draw a sharp distinction between full-time and part-time farmers. If the new plan turns out to be nothing more than a device to spread pork around to woo votes, then Japanese agriculture has no future.
There are also immense fiscal challenges. Since the total long-term indebtedness of the central and local governments has reached 666 trillion yen, the state is not in a position to raise additional revenues to pay for a new agricultural policy. Hence, it will have to be funded with money freed up by scaling down or abandoning crop-based compensation policies, the agricultural disaster compensation plan, and land improvement projects.
In addition, the government must take steps to insure that the new policy is transparent and fair, and complies with the rules of the World Trade Organization.
From the Mainichi Shimbun, Feb. 25
Copyright 2001 Mainichi Daily News:
