Government stresses agricultural 'structural reform' based on market forces

This year's "Agricultural White Paper" recognizes that Japanese agriculture is in a critical state with the calorie-based food self-sufficiency rate falling to 40 percent, the lowest among the major countries, but it presents no effective measures to be taken to restrict farms imports.

The annual report on the state of the nation's food, agriculture, and rural districts was published on May 20 by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.

It says that the acreage used for growing farm products imported by Japan is 2.5 times the Japanese farmland acreage.

The report also states that the farm producers' price fell about 20 percent during the ten years up to 2002 and that agricultural income dropped for four years in a row up to 2002.

But the report conspicuously fails to refer to the need to deal with the major cause of the present agricultural crisis: an increase in imports of farm products. It instead calls for the so-called structural reforms to be accelerated through leaving agriculture more to market forces and extending more help to large-scale farmers. (end)