High prices for food and energy are at the top of voter concerns nationwide in advance of Sunday's Upper House election. But nowhere is that more evident than in Hokkaido, where the agriculture sector faces higher costs in key areas and the fisheries industry finds itself directly impacted by Japan’s sanctions on Russian products over the invasion of Ukraine.
“The effects of the coronavirus and the situation in Ukraine have led to price spikes for oil and grains for animal feed, and to rises in the price of fertilizer, all of which has impacted Hokkaido’s agriculture industry,” said Koki Nakaya, an agricultural official for the prefecture of Hokkaido.
On June 1, about three weeks before the campaign kicked off, the Hokkaido Federation of Agricultural Cooperatives (JA Hokkaido) announced that it was raising the cost of fertilizer provided to Hokkaido farmers by 78.5% compared with last year, due to a long-term increase in global demand for cereals and grains combined with a fertilizer ingredient shortage and sharp rise in energy prices in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The two countries are major exporters of nitrogen and other fertilizer ingredients, and sanctions have been placed on Moscow's energy exports.
For the same reasons, the cost of mixed grain animal feed has also increased.
Given the importance of agriculture to the local economy, Hokkaido is particularly vulnerable to international and domestic events — both natural and human-made — that create supply disruptions and price spikes. Hokkaido accounts for 26% of Japan’s total land under cultivation and is responsible for about 14% of Japan’s agricultural output.
Specifically, Hokkaido produces 93.6% of Japan’s azuki beans, 79% of its potatoes, 65.7% of its onions and 66.4% of its wheat. In addition, 55% of Japan’s milk, half of its pumpkins, about 42% of its soybeans, 43% of its soba, 41% of its sweet corn and 20% of its beef comes from Hokkaido.
While Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s government provided financial assistance to farmers nationwide in the budget for the current fiscal year, Hokkaido’s heavy reliance on agriculture has forced local candidates from the major parties to address the rising costs. But there has been a different emphasis on what needs to be done.
Twelve candidates are vying for the three Hokkaido seats in play in this election. But the main race is between the two backed by ruling coalition partners the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito, and the two Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP) candidates.
Incumbent LDP candidate Gaku Hasegawa and former LDP Lower House member Toshimitsu Funahashi are addressing agricultural concerns in Hokkaido in two ways. The first is a call for more immediate financial relief.
In a stump speech Sunday in Sapporo, which was attended by Kishida, Hasegawa made a direct appeal for more central government assistance for both the agricultural and fisheries industries.
“Prime minister, the general support provided by the central government so far to help offset grain and fuel prices is still insufficient for Hokkaido,” Hasegawa said.
For his part, Kishida told supporters the central government has a responsibility to respond to the price spikes. He also spoke of addressing longer-term worries among Hokkaido farmers through central government support for new technologies to increase farm efficiency, touching on the second part of Hasegawa and Funahashi's proposals for the future of the local agriculture sector.
“In Hokkaido, where the farming sector is aging and declining, digitalization is a way to open the path forward and provide larger opportunities,” Kishida said.
As of 2021, there were over 34,000 farm entities in Hokkaido, and nearly 87% of these were individual farms. About 40% of farmers were over the age of 65, which was nevertheless lower than the national average of 71% for the same age group.
Building digital infrastructure and employing more cutting edge technologies on Hokkaido farms — such as drones for crop spraying, 5G networks for obtaining better weather forecasts, and automatic, computer-programmed tractors for planting and plowing — are areas Hasegawa has highlighted on his whistle-stop tours through the prefecture’s major agricultural areas. As of last year, there were over 18,000 global positioning satellite systems installed for farm use in Hokkaido.
The CDP candidates, incumbent Eri Tokunaga and former Lower House member Tomohiro Ishikawa, have also spoken of the need to help farmers hurt by the rising prices. But while they are promising to work for more direct short-term assistance, they have also argued that it is the low yen and the Kishida administration’s policies toward it, as well as a misplaced priority by the ruling coalition on raising defense spending, that are also the causes of the high prices.
“What is Kishida doing? The low yen isn’t helping anybody except a few companies exporting goods. And given the need to deal with the high prices, is now really the time to be talking about raising the defense budget to 2% of gross national product?” asked Ishikawa during a Sapporo campaign stop on June 26.
On Sunday, CDP leader Kenta Izumi called for action on prices when he visited Sapporo just half an hour before Kishida arrived.
“The government should reduce the price of imported wheat in order to control rising prices,” Izumi said.
Regardless of the Upper House election results, however, consumers of Hokkaido products inside and outside the prefecture are likely to see continued price rises in the coming months.
Farms that purchase the now much more expensive fertilizer and animal feed, most of which comes from abroad, may be forced to raise their prices when the crops come in or the meat or dairy products go to market later this year or next year, said Nakaya. But officials at JA Hokkaido also warn that the coronavirus pandemic and the price hikes caused by the invasion of Ukraine highlight the need to raise the food self-sufficiency rate, which was at 37% on a calorie basis in the fiscal year beginning April 2020.
“Japan’s food self-sufficiency rate as a whole is very low, and with the current international situation, we’re faced with questions about a stable supply of imported agricultural goods,” said Masahiko Hirayama, a JA Hokkaido official in charge of agricultural policy. "We need to think about a stable agricultural policy and a food security policy, as well as raising the food self-sufficiency rate.
“On these points, at least, the ruling and opposition parties are in agreement.”
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