Revitalizing national agriculture
(From The Japan Times July 1 issue)

農業の再活性化に向けて

    The plan is based on the 1999 basic law, which spells out four fundamental goals: securing a stable supply of food, bringing into full play the various functions of land used for agriculture, ensuring the sustainable growth of agriculture and promoting the advancement of agricultural communities.

    To vitalize the nation's agriculture, the agricultural sector should first step up efforts to gain the public's trust by promoting a stable food supply, food safety and the ability to meet diversified consumer demand.

    The government annual report takes up a prefecture-by-prefecture self-sufficiency rate in food supply for the first time. Because this rate is influenced by people's food preferences and changes in the foreign exchange rate, and because agricultural products freely move from prefecture to prefecture, setting a specific self-sufficiency rate as a policy goal for each prefecture would not have much meaning. But tracing changes in each prefecture's rate over a long period of time may help increase the nation's overall food self-sufficiency. It may help farmers and agricultural policy planners adjust agricultural production to better suit reality.

    Japan's calorie-based food self-sufficiency rate was 73 percent in fiscal 1965. But by 1998 it had dropped to 40 percent and remained there for seven consecutive years through fiscal 2004. The self-sufficiency rate based on agricultural output was 70 percent in both fiscal 2003 and 2004. The basic plan calls for raising the calorie-based self-sufficiency rate to 45 percent and the output-based self-sufficiency rate to 76 percent by the end of fiscal 2015.

    Preoccupation with year-by-year changes may be unproductive. But looking at long-term changes could help farmers and policy planners see problems and advantages in each prefecture's agricultural sector.

    Defining agricultural communities as "common property" of the Japanese people, the white paper says that they serve as an important base for the creation of a sustainable regional economy and society. In this connection, it calls attention to the importance of developing biomass to reduce dependency on fossil fuel.

    At the same time, it expresses concern that a population decrease and stagnation of local economies may weaken the agricultural sector, thus jeopardizing food-supply stability, preservation of the natural environment and the passing down of traditions and culture.

    Food-related industries, including agriculture, account for 10 percent of the nation's gross domestic product. In 2005, 3,338,000 people were engaged in agriculture, a decrease of 14.2 percent from 2000. Pointing to the small number of people aged under 50 who are engaged in agriculture, the white paper warns that a labor shortage may occur in the agricultural sector.

    The report mentions a new subsidy policy that is expected to help bring structural change to the nation's agricultural sector. Under this policy, the government will stop paying subsidies to every farming household.

    Instead it will provide subsidies to farming units above a certain size to equalize production conditions for wheat, soy beans, sugar beets and potatoes (for starch) with the conditions of foreign producers. Subsidies will be provided to such farming units to cushion the effect of price changes in these four staples plus rice.

    In the field of food security, the annual document calls for deeper cooperation among producers, processors and distributors to improve the traceability of agricultural products' places of origin. In fiscal 2004, 17.1 percent of food-product manufacturers surveyed used the traceability system for all their goods. The corresponding figure was 15.3 percent for food wholesalers and 11.2 percent for food retailers.

    On the consumption side, people aged 55 older account for more than half of the nation's food spending. The white paper predicts that the postwar baby boomers and older generations will exert a strong influence on trends in future food consumption.

    Agriculture is directly related to the people's daily life. The sector needs to respond flexibly to consumer demands under the principle of "producing and supplying good-quality products," as the white paper says. Agricultural producers should concern themselves most with food safety, technological innovation and the production of value-added products.

The Japan Times Weekly: July 8, 2006
(C) All rights reserved

    白書は初めて、県別の食料自給率を公表した。県別自給率に具体的目標を設定する意味はないが、同自給率の長期的推移を調査することにより、国の自給率を高める一助になる可能性がある。

    日本のカロリーベースの食料自給率は1965年度に73％だったが、1998年度に40％に下落、2004年度まで7年間連続で同じ水準に落ち着いている。生産額ベースの自給率は2003、2004年度にともに70%だった。基本計画では、2015年度までに、カロリーベースの自給率を45％に、生産額ベースの自給率を76%に上げることを目指している。

    白書は、国民の「共有財産」である農村は、持続的地域経済・社会の基礎になるとしている。

    同時に白書は、農村の過疎化と地方経済の停滞が農業部門を弱体化させ、食料の安定供給、環境保護、伝統・文化の継承を危うくするおそれがあるとしている。

    農業などの食料関係産業は、日本のGDPの10%を占める。05年の農業就業者数は333万8千人で、2000年に比べ14.2%減少した。

    白書はまた、農業部門に構造的変化をもたらすと期待される新補助金政策にふれている。この政策の下では、すべての農業世帯に支給されている補助金を廃止し、一定規模以上の農業経営者に対し補助金を支給して、小麦、大豆、テンサイ、馬鈴薯（澱粉用）の栽培条件を外国の生産者と平等にする計画である。

    食料安定供給面では、生産者、加工業者、流通業者の協力を求め、農産物のトレーサビリティ（原産地追跡性）を改善する計画である。

    国民の生活に直結している農業部門は、高品位の生産物を供給して消費者の需要に応える必要がある。生産者は、食料の安全、技術革新、高付加価値生産物の供給に努めるべきである。