When I tuned in to NHK's "Nihon Kore Kara (Japan From Now)" on Oct. 20 to watch a live citizens' debate about Japan's food-security crisis, I felt the issue was a no-brainer. Who could argue against the importance of food security, meaning the self-sufficiency of a country to feed itself? And given the fact that Japan's self-sufficiency rate is a dangerously low 39 percent right now, I assumed that the farmers of Japan should receive all the support they asked for.
But once the debate got under way I became confused. As it stands, rice, which the program identified as "our staple food," is the only agricultural product that is still widely protected. In the past few decades, the Japanese government has dismantled tariffs and other protections for food in order to support its industrial base, which is dependent on exports.
The program mentioned a possible Free Trade Agreement with Australia, under which Japanese farmers would lose an estimated ¥800 billion a year, 75 percent of it in the form of rice. However, the country's GDP would rise by ¥650 billion because of the steel and automobiles it would sell to Australia in exchange.