The Central Union of Agricultural Co-operatives (JA-Zenchu) announced Tuesday, October 29, that the Japan Agricultural Cooperatives (JA) group and Keidanren, an influential business lobby also known as the Japan Business Federation, will establish a working group to strengthen cooperation between business and agricultural sectors.
The move is part of JA’s efforts to collaborate with other industrial sectors to come up with new processed items in order to add value to agricultural products and reduce costs. The JA group included importance of such cooperation in its proposal on agricultural policies submitted to the government in June.
In the working group’s first meeting scheduled on Monday, November 11, JA-Zenchu President Akira Banzai and Keidanren Chairman Hiromasa Yonekura will discuss how the two organizations can work together to produce concrete results. The two groups plan to seek business chances in such areas as processing of agricultural products, raising efficiency of agriculture using information technology and promoting exports of agricultural products.
The two groups have conflicting opinions concerning the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade talks and deregulation of private companies’ entry in agricultural business, but they reached consensus on the need to foster people who can lead the regional agricultural business. They hope to deepen understanding of each other through future working group sessions.
Keidanren has compiled examples of cooperation among agricultural, business and industrial sectors, and announced a policy proposal in January, calling on the government to revise the individual-household income compensation system and other directly-paid subsidies for farmers and focus more on measures to stabilize and increase the size of agricultural business management, including consolidation of farmlands.
Lawson Inc. CEO Takeshi Niinami, who suggested abolishing the rice production adjustment program in an agricultural subcommittee of the government’s Industrial Competitiveness Council, belongs to the Japan Association for Corporate Executives, another business lobby known as Keizai Doyukai. Niinami has been presenting opinions on agricultural policies as the head of the group’s agricultural reform committee, even before he became a member of the government council.
(Oct. 30, 2013)