{"id":3476118,"date":"2019-03-08T10:55:06","date_gmt":"2019-03-08T10:55:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/?p=3476118"},"modified":"2019-03-18T10:55:05","modified_gmt":"2019-03-18T10:55:05","slug":"saving-japans-seed-heritage-from-free-trade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2019-03-08\/saving-japans-seed-heritage-from-free-trade\/","title":{"rendered":"Saving Japan\u2019s Seed Heritage from \u201cFree Trade\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently had the opportunity to interview Masahiko Yamada, formerly Japan\u00b4s Minister of Agriculture and now one of the country\u00b4s foremost food sovereignty activists. We met at an international\u00a0Economics of Happiness Conference<\/a>\u00a0in Prato, Italy, where Yamada delivered a keynote speech about the birth of a new citizens\u2019 movement to protect Japan\u00b4s food-crop heritage<\/a> from corporate take-over.<\/p>\n

Keen to learn more, I ask Yamada for an interview before he departs Italy. With only an hour to spare, we rush off to find a\u00a0caffetteria<\/em>\u00a0with a spare table. Joining us as translator is Keibo Oiwa, author of\u00a0Slow is Beautiful: Culture as Slowness<\/em>, the book that inspired the Slow Living movement in Japan.\u00a0 Over a strong cup of Italian coffee, Mr. Yamada responds to my many questions.<\/p>\n

From traditional farming to post-war industrialization\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yamada tells me he was born on a farm in Japan\u2019s countryside during the Second World War. At the time, Japanese farmers practiced mixed farming \u2013 the growing of crops combined with the raising of livestock, for the added benefit of both.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody in the countryside owned a few pigs and a cow or two, and grew several arable crops. The main cereals \u2013 rice, wheat and soya \u2013 were alternated on the fields throughout the year. Rice and wheat would be followed by the nitrogen-fixing soya. This was our traditional way of farming,\u201d<\/em>\u00a0says Yamada.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

However, this started to change after the American post-war occupation of Japan and the extensive restructuring that followed. On the one hand, conditions improved for many farmers, as land reform redistributed agricultural land from absentee landlords, via forced sales to the government, to tenant farmers who worked the land and paid a proportion of their crops in rent. To avoid a return to the concentration of land in a few hands, the government limited farm size per household to what a family could farm without outside labor \u2013 approximately 1-4 ha (2.5-10 acres) depending on the region. The reform resulted in better conditions for Japanese farmers and a legally protected landscape of small family farms that remains today.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the US occupation \u2013 amounting to several hundred thousand soldiers \u2013 led to a rapid process of industrialization, along with the emulation of the American lifestyle, including food habits. This meant a shift away from the traditional diet of rice, fish, vegetables and soya-products, towards a diet rich in meat and oils. Over a fifty-year period (1955-2005), the consumption of meat increased nine-fold and oil consumption rose five-fold; meanwhile the consumption of rice fell by half.[1]<\/a>\u00a0\u201cAmericanization\u201d also led to the rapid adoption of \u201cmodern farming\u201d \u2013 large-scale specialized and industrialized agriculture \u2013 and a growing dependence on imported foods.<\/p>\n

From farmer to visionary politician<\/strong><\/p>\n

As a young adult, Yamada followed the new trend of specialization and became a monocultural pork producer, with 5,000 pigs. Things went well at first, he says, but his business, like that of many other \u201cmodern\u201d Japanese farmers, failed during the 1970s oil crisis. By then, Japanese agriculture was heavily tied to a volatile global fossil-fuel based economy. The oil embargo of 1973-74 led to a rapid rise in the cost of animal feed, coupled with a drop in the price of meat, as consumers tightened their purses during the crisis. Like many Japanese farmers at the time, Yamada was caught in a fatal squeeze between high costs for inputs and low prices for his production. He tried shifting to retailing, with a butcher business, but still could not survive economically.<\/p>\n

Yamada\u2019s hands-on experience as a modern farmer in a volatile global economy led him to question the way agriculture was changing, and to appreciate the value of Japan\u00b4s traditional small-scale diverse farms that operated without dependence on expensive inputs or big bank loans. He became convinced that the way forward was to strengthen and improve Japan\u00b4s diversified and integrated farming culture, including its many family farms, rather than pursuing further industrialization and specialization.<\/p>\n

He took a drastic step and re-schooled as a lawyer. Later on, he entered politics and was elected to the House of Representatives in 2003. Six years later he became Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF), and was officially appointed Minister of MAFF in 2010.<\/p>\n

As Minister, one of the first things he did was to publically declare:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe highly industrialized agricultural model has been a mistake and a failure<\/em>\u2026we need to strengthen small scale, family-based agriculture instead\u201d<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yamada took immediate steps to act on this belief by instituting a guaranteed minimum income for farming families. As is true in most places today, decades of low farm incomes had led young people to shy away from a life on the land, leaving the old to farm alone. The average age of farmers had by then reached 65 (it\u2019s now 67), while the number of people engaged in farming had dropped from a steady 14 million people between 1870-1960, to a mere 2.2 million farmers by 2015.[2]<\/a>\u00a0Not only that, two-thirds of these relied on secondary jobs and pensions to make ends meet.<\/p>\n

The guarantee of a basic income had the desired effect: a marked increase in the number of young people engaged in farming. It had suddenly become possible for younger generations to return to their family farms without risking everything.<\/p>\n

Out in the cold<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yamada\u00b4s agricultural vision \u2013 a more localized model based on diversified family farms \u2013 was not in line with the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) government, led by Prime Minister Shinz\u014d Abe. This was not the only thing they differed on. Yamada was also highly critical of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) \u2013 the \u201cfree trade\u201d agreement that the Japanese government was seeking to join at the time.[3]<\/a>\u00a0As Agriculture Minister, Yamada warned that the TPP would undermine Japan\u00b4s food sovereignty and further squeeze small farmers. Not surprisingly, Yamada was pushed out of office at the end of 2011, after only two years as Minister.<\/p>\n

I ask Yamada what happened to the guaranteed basic income after he left office. He gives me a small smile and says,\u00a0\u201cIt was abolished, or rather phased out, ending in 2018\u2026But there is good news: the main opposition party\u00a0<\/em>[the Constitutional Democrat Party]\u00a0plans to bring it back this year. The guaranteed minimum income for farming families is their number one goal\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n

Japan\u2019s crop seed heritage under threat<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yamada is one of those people who doesn\u2019t give up. With his background in farming, law and politics, he was the perfect person to kick-start a bottom-up citizen-led movement to protect Japanese crop seed production. This had come under threat when the Japanese government moved in 2013 to abolish the Main Crop Seeds Law \u2013 a 67-year-old law protecting native seed production. According to Yamada, this move (along with other deregulatory steps), was an \u201cadmission fee\u201d for joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership and a goodwill gesture to lobbyists for transnational agribusinesses.<\/p>\n

The Main Crop Seeds Law, created in 1952, requires each of Japan\u2019s 47 prefectures to maintain good quality seeds of the main staple crops: soya, rice, wheat, barley and oats. To this end, the prefectures run agricultural experimental stations that reproduce a wide range of varieties adapted to different locations and growing conditions. The agricultural stations, supported by the federal government, have for the past seven decades sold locally adapted high-quality open-pollinated seeds at an affordable price. The law is an example of visionary policy-making: it recognizes a key fundament of the long-term health of any society \u2013 its ability to feed itself. For that purpose, there is hardly anything more important than maintaining the production of native crop-seeds, rather than relying on a narrow range of commercial one-size-fits-all seeds.<\/p>\n

On April 1, 2018, the Main Crop Seeds Law was revoked. The abolition went hand in hand with a recently enacted \u201cAgricultural Competitiveness Strengthening and Support Law\u201d, which mandates the \u201csharing\u201d of information on seed production \u2013 or more accurately, the no-cost transfer of know-how from public-sector institutions to the private sector.[4]<\/a>\u00a0This essentially amounts to the expropriation of an intellectual commons for the benefit of private, for-profit interests. The opposite situation would have been considered an infringement of agribusinesses\u2019 intellectual property rights.<\/p>\n

Farmers, food cooperatives, NGOs and other citizens\u2019 groups are extremely worried about the consequences for farmers and for the country\u2019s food security. With the seed protection law gone, many experimental stations will likely cease to exist, as will support for the production of native seeds, something that will hit the country\u00b4s small producers particularly hard. Meanwhile, transnational seed giants are waiting to take over seed production and marketing. In all likelihood, farmers will come to depend on big agribusiness for their seeds. As the corporate-commercial seeds tend to be hybrids (i.e. their attributes are not passed on to the next generation and many are designed to be sterile), farmers will have no choice but to buy new seeds year after year.<\/p>\n

Yamada\u2019s greatest concern, though, is for Japan\u00b4s rich seed diversity \u2013 in particular its chief crop, rice, which has been grown in Japan for over 2,500 years. There are over 300 varieties that vary in terms of taste, fragrance, and texture, and in their adaptability to the wide range of bio-climatic conditions that exist in Japan.<\/p>\n

While local seed production inevitably leads to high diversity, seed production at the hands of a few transnational agribusinesses leads to the polar opposite \u2013 a small range of commercial breeds. Japan therefore is at risk of losing its crop diversity for good.<\/p>\n

This is a very real threat. According to FAO, 75% of crop seeds disappeared between 1900 and 2000.[5]<\/a>\u00a0In the US, where agribusiness and large-scale specialized farms have long dominated, the loss is estimated at 93% in only 80 years.[6]<\/a><\/p>\n

After the recent-mega mergers of the world\u00b4s largest agricultural agribusinesses, only three conglomerates now control half of all seed sales in the world: DowDuPont, Bayer-Monsanto, and Syngenta-ChemChina, which will mean a further decrease in seed diversity. The biggest revenue source for these companies, however, is not from the sale of seeds but from the agricultural chemicals that go with them. As investigative journalist Mark Schapiro puts it, \u201cThe combina\u00adtion of chemical and seed companies is giving rise to seeds that are born addicted to chemicals for their survival \u2013 entire generations full of crack-baby seeds.\u201d[7]<\/a><\/p>\n

Fighting back<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yamada tells me that after he was pushed out of government, he joined forces with an impressive group of 150 lawyers that has challenged as unconstitutional both the TPP agreement and the government\u2019s decision to abolish the seed protection law. Challenging the TPP in court is a hefty job. Like all \u201cfree trade\u201d treaties, the written agreements are over-complicated and designed to confuse.\u00a0Yamada explains that the 30 chapters of the most recent version of the\u00a0TPP agreement contain more than 8,000 pages. When asked about the outcome of the court case, he says:<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst we took them to the local court and then to the national court. We lost both times. But the court did acknowledge that the TPP is behind the abolishing of the Main Crop Seeds Law. We are not giving up: we are now taking the case to the Supreme Court, as TPP violates articles 25 and 13 of our constitution. It is not only our seeds that are at risk, but our water, which is now in the process of being privatized and sold to foreign companies.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yamada is employing a two-prong strategy. Along with the fight at the very top of the legal system, he is mobilizing a grassroots movement to initiate change from the bottom. For a year he has traveled across the country, from one small rural town to the next, to encourage and organize local and regional groups to resist the transnationals and to pressure local government (on a prefecture level) to issue ordinances that protect Japan\u2019s native seeds, in the absence of adequate national laws.<\/p>\n

[slide-anything id=’3472166′]<\/p>\n

In Japan, any citizen may submit a suggestion to their local government. By law, the local government is obliged to discuss and consider suggestions submitted to them by citizens. Thanks to this direct democracy practice, it has been possible for individuals and groups to propose local laws to protect their seeds.<\/p>\n

The bottom-up strategy has been hugely successful. In less than a year, hundreds of requests have been sent to local governments across the country. Three prefectures (Niigata, Hyogo and Saitama) have now passed seed-protection laws, while Nagano, Toyama, Hokkaido and Yamagata \u2013 prefectures with large farming communities \u2013 are in the process of doing the same. Reports from across the country indicate that another twelve will follow suit before long. Yamada\u00b4s aim is for all 47 prefectures to take legal protective action.<\/p>\n

In support of the campaign, a broad \u201cCoalition to Protect Japanese Seeds\u201d has been formed by food coops, citizens\u2019 groups, NGOs and farmers. The national Agricultural Association, which previously supported the Liberal Democrat Party\u00b4s free trade policies, has now joined the campaign to protect Japan\u00b4s seed heritage.<\/p>\n

Is water next?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yamada points out that it is not only agriculture and seeds that are threatened under the \u201cfree trade\u201d agenda: water is the next \u201ccommons\u201d<\/em>\u00a0in line to be privatized and commercialized. Until recently, water in Japan was managed by the prefectures, but both the TPP and the revised CCTPP agreement are opening up the privatization of water on a massive scale.<\/p>\n

In July 2018, a new law allowing water privatization was passed in\u00a0the lower house of Parliament. Whether it will pass\u00a0the upper house remains to be seen, but the present government has been urging cities to privatize their water-works for some time, to avoid the fiscal burden of replacing aging water and sewage systems.<\/p>\n

The transfer of water rights into the hands of foreign corporations, Yamada believes, is a short-sighted solution to the limitations of the public purse. Citizens, local businesses and even public institutions will henceforth have to pay more for their water, in order to provide distant share-holders with a steady profit in a speculative market.<\/p>\n

The Asian Development Bank is already helping to privatize water in many Japanese cities. So far Matsuyama City has sold its water to a French company.\u00a0\u201cWater is now five times more expensive,\u201d\u00a0<\/em>Yamada tells me.\u00a0\u201cBefore, poor people could get water in the public parks, but even that has now become illegal\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n

Yamada is ready to kickstart another citizen\u2019s movement to protect water, using the same bottom-up strategy as the one being used to protect Japan\u00b4s seeds. \u201cIf we can do this here, then it can be done in other countries as well,\u201d\u00a0<\/em>Yamada concludes, before he rushes off to his next destination.<\/p>\n

Japan\u00b4s situation is not unique: the corporatization of the commons is happening everywhere, as the result of heavy corporate lobbying and the direct involvement of big business in the drafting of trade treaties. The TPP is a good example of this skewed process: 600 official corporate \u201ctrade advisors\u201d took part in closed-door negotiations from the very beginning, while civil society was left to depend on leaked documents for information. Yet, most governments are willing participants in this rigged \u201ctrade game\u201d as part of an endless quest for further economic growth.<\/p>\n

Despite the limitations of a finite planet, there is still an almost-religious belief in the growth model, both as a recipe for \u201ceconomic health\u201d and as a broad-spectrum cure for all ailments, from poverty to climate change. So far, the results have been the opposite \u2013 an economy that primarily benefits the 1% and environmental breakdown on all levels, including soaring CO2 emissions.<\/p>\n

The privatization of the commons is part of the same story. Clearly, the biggest beneficiaries aren\u00b4t people or even nation-states, but global business enterprises and their shareholders.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time for us to wake up and practice direct democracy \u2013 to join with others to stop further corporatization and regain control over our commons, our communities, our cultures and our economies. Because if\u00a0we<\/em>\u00a0don’t, who will? Masahiko Yamada and the new citizens\u2019 movement in Japan have come up with a few tricks we can learn from.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Image credit:\u00a0<\/em>Climate Action<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a>\u00a0Nagata, Kazuaki,\u00a0\u201cJapan needs imports to keep itself fed<\/a>\u201c,\u00a0<\/em>Japan Times, February 26, 2008.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a>\u00a0Yutaka, Harada,\u00a0Japan\u2019s Agriculture and the TPP<\/em><\/a>, The Tokyo Foundation for Policy Research, November 21, 2013; \u201cJapan\u2019s Farming Population Rapidly Aging and Decreasing\u201d<\/a>, Nippon.com, July 3, 2018; Kasahara, Shigehisa,\u00a0\u201cThe Role of Agriculture in the Early Phase of Industrialization: Policy implications of Japan\u2019s experience<\/a>\u201c, UNCTAD, February, 1996;\u00a0Statistical Handbook of Japan 2018<\/a><\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n

[3]<\/a>\u00a0The TPP was revised after the USA pulled out, and is now named the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). It is also known as TPP11, as 11 countries remain:\u00a0Australia,\u00a0Brunei,\u00a0Canada,\u00a0Chile,\u00a0Japan,\u00a0Malaysia,\u00a0Mexico,\u00a0New Zealand,\u00a0Peru,\u00a0Singapore,\u00a0Vietnam. It is the third-largest free trade treaty in the world, calculated by the countries\u2019 combined GDP, after the North American Free Trade Agreement and Europe\u00b4s Single Market.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a>\u00a0\u201cAbolition of Main Crops Seeds Law puts nation at risk<\/a>\u201c, Japan Times, March 20, 2018.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a>\u00a0What is Happening to Agrobiodiversity?<\/em><\/a>\u00a0FAO Factsheet.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a>\u00a0Infographic: In 80 Years, We Lost 93% Of Variety In Our Food Seeds<\/em><\/a>, FastCompany.com.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a>\u00a0Schapiro, Mark,\u00a0\u201cSeed diversity is disappearing \u2014 and 3 chemical companies own more than half<\/a>\u201c,\u00a0<\/em>Salon, September 16, 2018.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s time for us to wake up and practice direct democracy \u2013 to join with others to stop further corporatization and regain control over our commons, our communities, our cultures and our economies. Because if\u00a0we\u00a0don’t, who will? Masahiko Yamada and the new citizens\u2019 movement in Japan have come up with a few tricks we can learn from.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128238,"featured_media":3476119,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[213522,213526,79719,213531],"tags":[94348,200037,99427,213580],"class_list":["post-3476118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inspiration","category-act-inspiration-featured","category-foodwater","category-food-water-featured","tag-foodsovereignty","tag-heritageseeds","tag-japan","tag-rebuilding-resilient-food-and-farming-systems"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3476118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3476118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3476118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3476119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3476118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3476118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3476118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}