Report No.240901
Vol.24 No.9 May 2007

NEWS

- Domestic -

National Strategy on Food and Agriculture

On April 4, the government's Headquarters for the Promotion of Policies for Food, Agriculture and Rural Areas (led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe) approved the "New Agricultural Policy for the 21 Century". The policy contains the major elements of (1) the establishment of a national strategy on food and agriculture, (2) fundamental enhancement of the domestic agriculture industry, (3) full introduction of the good agricultural practices (GAP), (4) accelerated use of biomass, and (5) increase in the number of visitors to and inhabitants of rural areas. This initiative will serve as a principle for the future agricultural policy development, and will be pursued by the government as a whole.

At a meeting held at the Prime Minister's official residence, Prime Minister Abe emphasized his position to accelerate the agricultural policy reform that is farmer-oriented saying, "It is impossible to create a beautiful country without beautiful rural areas. The establishment of a solid base of the agriculture requires a further structural reform for the realization of the environment where farmers can use their ingenuity and innovative ideas."

The national strategy on food and agriculture contains the establishment of a "new food strategy" in response to a change in the global food situation such as increased demand of food in China and of bio-ethanol crops. National Food Council ( tentative name) comprised of intellectuals will be newly established to share the awareness of foods among all the people in Japan. The initiative reminds of numerical targets including the increase in agricultural products and other food export to 1 trillion yen a year by 2013 and increase in domestic bio-fuel production to 50,000 kiloliters a year by 2011.

Regarding the fundamental enhancement of the domestic agriculture industry, focus will be placed on the measures for farmers such as a non-commodity-specific provision to stabilize the farm management. In addition, a farmland policy will be reviewed to advance the concentrated use of the sizable farmland. A measure to reduce food supply cost will support the management of farmers through decreasing prices of input materials through reform of JA Group. According to the guidelines developed by the Japan Fair Trade Commission and other regulations, the government will ensure that the JA and other stakeholders will not conduct unfair trade.

The initiative also contains the objective to introduce GAP at all major producing areas of vegetables, fruits, rice, wheat and barley (2,000 areas) by 2011. During the next five years, the majority (more than 1,000) of cities and towns across the country will develop a new effort toward the increase in the number of inhabitants and visitors.

Note:
GAP
According to the Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, "basic good agricultural practices (GAP)" will be introduced as a method to manage risks in the production of agricultural products to spread to all the commercial farm households. This method requires farmers to select specific items to be checked for the agricultural production, check the items, and record the results. Traditionally, the agricultural products have been managed in terms of the "outcomes", for example, through a residual pesticide test. This means that the management involves only the harvested products. The new method to manage the "production process" will ensure the safety of agricultural products, and consequently the confidence of consumers. GAP is planned to be introduced at 2,000 producing areas for five years starting from FY 2007.

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