"Tis the season for predictions, and last week Hiromasa Yonekura, the chairman of the Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren), told Asahi Shimbun he believed Japan will decide in 2013 to take part in the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks. Yonekura is also chairman of Sumitomo Chemical, which in 2010 signed a tie-up agreement with American agrichemical giant Monsanto, so TPP, which would remove many existing trade barriers between the United States and Japan, is something Yonekura has a stake in.
Media discussions of TPP usually focus on Japanese farmers who fear the import of cheaper foreign produce, but the Yonekura connection implies a more elemental agricultural concern: seeds. The deal Sumitomo and Monsanto struck is to develop a "new platform" for Monsanto's genetically modified crops. Monsanto is the world's largest seed company, a position it achieved by selling seed modified to produce plants that withstand its own herbicide, Roundup, thus making farmers dependent on the company for both products. The partnership encourages Monsanto to develop a new set of GM seeds and weed-killers with Sumitomo's help, probably based on the latter's own brand of herbicides.
The agricultural ministry restricts the cultivation of GM crops, and while Japan allows some GM food to enter the country it has to be labeled as such. Scientists question the safety of GM food.