Alarm at business-led agriculture and massive food imports

Japan Press Weekly

Japan Press Service Co., Ltd. is the only news agency providing information of progressive, democratic movements in Japan

Alarm at business-led agriculture and massive food imports

The National Coalition of Workers, Farmers and Consumers for Safe Food and Health in Japan (Shokkenren) on May 23 in Tokyo held a symposium to raise the alarm at business corporations encroaching on agriculture and at the government allowing massive food import at the neglect of food safety. About 140 people took part in the symposium calling for a change in agricultural policy.

A rice farmer from Fukushima, one of the four panelists, said, "Farmers are not to blame for giving up farming, as they cannot live on farming income alone. Their abandonment shows that the government policy has failed." He said that the government should help farmers with their various creative efforts for a self-supporting agriculture, instead of allowing business corporations to buy farmland and regard agriculture as another business venture.

A lawyer with expertise in food safety criticized the food safety committee for not adequately functioning and instead approving dangerous food additives.

A trade union member at the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry reported on the import of polluted rice. He said that the real question is that imported rice is highly likely to be tainted with mold toxins and pesticides, and that government offices are urging traders to buy such rice cheap.

Vice president of the Japan Family Farmers Movement (NOUMINREN) said that multinational corporations have greatly gained from promoting agricultural imports. He said that the government policy of subsidizing trading companies to get foreign farmland enclosed for agricultural production means that the Japanese government is paying 2,500 yen per head of lettuce. The family farmers' movement representative called on the meeting for a change in politics so that family farming is sustained in Japan where agricultural productivity is higher than that in the United States and Europe.

- Akahata, May 25, 2009