Global Policy Forum

By Andrés Martinez

All of the 250 or so members of the 1971 class at Kurihara Agricultural High School in Miyagi prefecture — three hours north of Tokyo by bullet train — went into farming upon graduating, but by now, fewer than a dozen are still doing it full time.

"Early on, I was so excited to be producing rice for all those people in Tokyo and other cities. And they in turn felt a connection to the land, because people's roots, no matter where they lived, were out here," said Koushi Seiwa, one of the few remaining full-time farmers from his class, in a recent chat in the cafe his wife runs. He pointed emphatically out the window as he spoke, toward the tidy, perfectly irrigated rice paddies.

Farmers here are determined to remind anyone who will listen that the sense of order in the Japanese countryside isn't Mother Nature's doing. "Time was when people felt a responsibility to care for the land you received from your parents and they from their parents, and this was central to Japanese culture," added Hiko Hisamitsu, a friend and Kurihara High classmate of Mr. Seiwa.

This equating of agriculture with land stewardship lies at the heart of Japanese and European reluctance to meet developing countries' demands that they lower their barriers to farm imports. Japan's exorbitant rice tariffs, hovering near 500 percent, are Exhibit A of such reluctance. Yet farmers like Mr. Seiwa worry about the incessant international pressure, combined with younger generations' lack of interest in agriculture.

"Now, younger people in Tokyo wouldn't know how to grow rice if their life depended on it, and a lot of consumers probably wouldn't think twice about buying imported rice," he complained.

Not that they are able to do so. For the Japanese government, which continues to spend billions of dollars each year supporting its farmers, rice protectionism is as much a matter of cultural policy as it is an agricultural matter. The Japanese word for rice, gohan, is also used as the generic term for any meal. Besides being the staple of the traditional Japanese diet, rice is also used to make candies and provides the national drink, sake, or rice wine.

Still, recession-weary consumers here are tired of paying three or four times more for food than people do elsewhere. And Japanese industry resents the fact that the country's farm policies have stymied any number of potential free-trade deals with resentful agricultural exporters. The farmers' aversion to regional and bilateral trade agreements has hurt Japanese manufacturers in dealing with countries like Mexico, where European and American competitors enjoy duty-free privileges. Over the long run, it could affect Japan's critical relationship with China, which is eager to sell Japan cheap rice.Japan now uses a quota system to import less than 10 percent of all rice consumed, tariff-free. The rest runs up against that whopping 500 percent wall. If the tariffs were abolished or significantly reduced, Japan would find itself importing more than half the rice it consumes, according to Keijiro Otsuka, an economist at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo and a leading proponent of liberalization.

An open Japanese market would probably create a trickle-down effect for other rice-producing nations. Farmers in California, Australia and China, where producer prices are one-tenth those in Japan, would be the biggest beneficiaries. They produce the short-grain, stickier Japonica rice that Japanese consumers prefer. Poorer tropical countries unable to produce such rice would, in turn, probably sell more of their own rice to China, which would most likely shift some of its production over to Japonica for export.

Japanese farmers equate that kind of change with the end of Japanese agriculture, but Mr. Otsuka and other economists here don't agree, especially if trade liberalization led to a restructuring of the farming sector. Ever since the implementation of American-prescribed land reform after World War II, farming has been organized around small-time producers. Corporations are literally banned from farming. An end to the current massive protectionism might mean that farms of tomorrow would be larger and more efficient.

Mr. Seiwa sadly views the future in pretty much the same way. "You should wait a few years and once this generation of farmers has all retired, you can then have a few companies here run everything, as they do in America," he said.

For Japan, the question of how much to protect its farmers, and at what cost to its international interests and obligations, is a matter that straddles competing national identities. One is of Japan as an island striving for self-sufficiency, shutting out the rest of the world until well into the 19th century and Commodore Matthew Perry's arrival.Then there is the more contemporary idea of Japan, the world's second-largest economy and a nation that owes its prosperity to its exporting prowess. This outward-looking Japan believes it has the right to unfettered access to global markets, even if it means that a lot of people elsewhere — including plenty of factory workers in America — lose their livelihoods.

The apparent double standard is always resolved by Japanese officials with an assertion that agriculture is different. The view that farm goods should not be regulated by trade rules covering other products is still widely held here — as it is in many other developed nations whose attitude toward their farmers is equally protective, although often more flexible than Japan's.

Tokyo knows it can no longer openly demand to have it both ways, and professes to want progress in the World Trade Organization's so-called development round of trade liberalization talks. At the same time, it is making common cause with the European Union to oppose meaningful concessions before the Cancún W.T.O. meeting next month. The worst nightmare for Japanese officials is that Washington and the Europeans might still come to an understanding on how to go about reducing tariffs and subsidies before Cancún, leaving Tokyo totally isolated in its opposition.

Japan owes it to the world's poorest to alter its negotiating stance, but it also owes it to itself. Nobody stands to lose as much as Japan in the event that the developing world leads a global backlash against free trade.

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