Japanese agriculture is beleaguered. Farmland keeps shrinking as aging farmers retire. Collective farming is all but stalled as prospective partners stay on the sidelines. The domestic market faces strong pressure for liberalization. For all this, structural reform is making little headway. No wonder a sense of crisis underscores the new policy guidelines presented recently by an advisory panel to the agriculture and fisheries minister.
The "Basic Program for Food, Agriculture and Rural Areas," as the guidelines are formally called, sets the direction of the nation's farm policy for the next 10 years. Its primary objective is to support farmers who are both willing and able to cultivate fairly large amounts of acreage on a long-term basis. They are expected to play the leading role in developing a more productive and competitive farm sector.
Generally, the guidelines set the right course. The drawback is that they lack specific plans to nurture pace-setting farmers. This is partly due to the fact that, as panel discussions demonstrate, farm groups and the Liberal Democratic Party remain at odds over key aspects of agricultural policy -- despite their seemingly common perception of the crisis in agriculture.