The future of rice farming in Japan

Rice has been at the center of Japan’s economy and culture for centuries. But changes are
afoot. There is growing concern among Japanese farmers that the country’s rice-producing
capabilities are diminishing in the face of international trade pacts such as the Trans-Pacific
Partnership. In fact, all local agriculture is in the spotlight as pressure mounts to increase local
import of overseas produce.

Setsuko Yasuda has been following this situation closely. She heads the Japan Organic
Agriculture Association and the Vision 21 information center, which monitors the government’s
policies on agriculture and food safety, among other things. In a recent interview she addressed
these concerns and explained how rice consumption and production in Japan is changing.

The government is not doing enough to protect national rice production. This is very
troubling because rice has not only been our staple diet; it has been at the heart of Japanese life
and culture. Collaboration and sharing, for example, are very important in Japanese society, and
the origin of this can be found in the way rice is produced on a communal level. Also, up to the
second half of the 19th century, economic wealth was calculated in rice. In other words, Japan’s
society, culture and economy have been built around rice. If we throw away all the hard work
our ancestors have done we are going to destroy both the environment and our food culture. 
Until 1995 the government used to buy all the rice produced in Japan before selling it at a
relatively high price (agreed upon with the agricultural cooperatives) in order to sustain the
farmers. At the same time, rice imports were banned.

Since the end of the 1980s, the United States pressured the (Japanese) government to lift
the ban on importing foreign rice, and now the same thing is being debated in connection with
the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

The way the United States is trying to force Japan to accept rice imports just because the
U.S. has a surplus of rice — it has nothing to do with Japan’s food needs. In 1960, the average
annual consumption (of rice) was 118 kilograms per person. Now it’s 61 kilograms — we
consume about half the rice we used to eat 50 years ago. After World War II, Japan imported
many new ideas from America. One of them was that a bread-based diet was better for our
health. At that time, it was advertised widely that eating rice made you stupid (laughs). So for
many years the Japanese Government provided only bread for school lunches. In Japanese
homes, many people now eat bread or pasta at least once a day and we eat a lot of meat. And
most meat and wheat — together with other products such as soy beans and corn — are imported
mainly from the U.S. As a result, Japan’s food self-sufficiency has gone down from 80 percent in
1960 to only 39 percent in 2006.