Japanese farmers struggle to make election choices over TPP
July 13, 2013 | Mainichi Japan
FOCUS: Japanese farmers struggle to make election choices over TPP
TOKYO (Kyodo) — As voting for the upper house election approaches, Japanese farmers and their lobby groups are struggling to see who will best speak up for their interests.
While they have been a traditional support base for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, many have grown skeptical about backing its candidates after the LDP chief, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, announced in March an intention to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations for creating one of the world’s largest free trade zones.
The pact, now being negotiated by 11 nations and set to involve Japan from late July, is estimated to boost the country’s gross domestic product by 3.2 trillion yen but at the same time slash Japan’s agricultural output by 3 trillion yen from 7.1 trillion yen if all tariffs are eliminated without compensation measures.
Alarmed, the Hokkaido agricultural cooperative has decided not to back the LDP candidate fielded in the prefecture’s proportional representation block for the first time in its history. Some other prefectural cooperatives have also decided to support candidates from opposition parties.
But whether they have the power to sway the overall outcome of the House of Councillors election on July 21 remains murky as other agricultural cooperatives still support LDP candidates, with some local officials saying they deem it more important to keep up their ties with the LDP given that the party is expected to score a resounding victory.
"We are adamantly opposed to the aspect of the TPP that will devastate Japan’s agriculture, but the LDP and the government have said they will protect it for sure," said Akira Banzai, president of the Central Union of Agricultural Co-operatives, at a press conference last month.
He urged the LDP-led government to keep its promise, saying the group backed LDP candidates who share its stance against the TPP in the general election in December through which the party returned to power.
"Politics is about trust," he said.
Even without the impact of the TPP, Japan’s agriculture faces many challenges, including the rapid aging of farmers and often-low profitability.
According to the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry’s white paper for fiscal 2012, the average age of farmers topped 66 and is almost at 70 for rice farmers. Among cattle farmers, the percentage of those with sales of 10 million yen or greater was 85 percent, but it was just 1 percent for rice farmers.
The government has taken measures to ease the worries of farmers by including in its growth strategy a plan to double agriculture income by raising crop exports to 1 trillion yen by 2020 from the current 450 billion yen among other steps.
But economic experts have criticized the plan as unrealistic and called the pursuit of the TPP and farming plan contradictory aims.
Among such vocal critics, Satoshi Daigo, professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo, said, "Including the (promotion of) the TPP in its pledges and promising to double agricultural income are exact opposite things."
Daigo said that while the LDP government justifies the TPP by saying the farming industry faces stagnation even without it, promoting the TPP will only put pressure on agriculture, rather than helping boost it.
As Japan’s key crops such as rice rely heavily on government subsidies and protection under tariffs imposed on foreign produce, the removal of such "trade barriers" will have a huge impact.
The LDP and the Diet’s agriculture committees have adopted resolutions calling for the government to protect key farm products — rice, wheat, beef, pork, dairy products and sugar — and withdraw from the negotiations if it deems the pact would not serve the national interest.
Keeping the resolutions in mind, Japan’s negotiators will join from July 23 the 18th round of TPP talks scheduled from July 15 to 25 in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia.
But regardless of the outcome, researchers call for deeper discussions within the nation, saying the public generally does not share the perspective of farming communities in the countryside.
"Cities are dependent on the countryside for food, electricity and even manufacturing base...Cities cannot survive without the farming communities," said Kohei Seki, associate professor at Shimane University.
His study revealed the agricultural output of Toyama and Fukui prefectures and Hokkaido will be reduced by more than 40 percent, though the impact will be smaller in prefectures with major cities.
"We hope that there will be substantial discussions in every part of Japan over whether we should take part in the TPP negotiations or not," Seki said.
