[By Kazushiro Tamiya, Editor in Chief of The Japan Agricultural News]
While the Lower House election is an election to decide who should be in power, the Upper House election is more of a confidence vote in the administration. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s administration is highly likely to be maintained, but the election will decide whether the forces backing Abe will increase or decrease. In another words, the election will make clear whether Abe’s administration will step on the accelerator or the brakes.
The past three and a half years saw a historical turning point in terms of agricultural policies, as the Japanese government joined the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade talks and reached agreement, as well as implementing major structural reform under the goal of making agriculture a growth industry. However, the nation is yet to complete the turn, and the government still faces various issues to tackle after the election, including getting the Diet’s approval for the TPP pact, compiling medium- to long-term measures to cope with market liberalization under the deal, reducing prices of farming materials, introducing the income insurance system for farmers and reviewing the designated producers system for raw milk distribution. To what degree the government will deal with the issues depends on how strong Abe’s administration will become as a result of the election.
A keystone for the agricultural policies of Abe, who succeeded in creating a strong administration with the Abenomics economic policies, is the powerful policy control by the prime minister’s office. The direction for reform is decided only through a filter of the prime minister’s advisory panel, and the decisions strongly reflect the intentions of businesspeople who are members of the panel. Policies such as the abolition of the nation’s rice production adjustment, the agricultural cooperatives reform, deregulation of farmland transactions and the proposal to abolish the designated producers system all originated from the advisory panel. Farmers are concerned that important policy changes are made not as election campaign pledges but by an advisory panel. This could mean democracy is in danger of becoming a mere name.
Recently, agricultural policies are apparently shifting towards deregulation. With the growing prominence of neoliberalism, the government is increasingly adopting the idea that liberalization of production and distribution leads to the growth of the agriculture industry, while traditional policymaking based on the notions of sharing, cooperating and supporting the weak is gradually declining.
What decides the results of the Upper House election is the 32 single-seat constituencies. Not a few of them are located in farming areas, and agricultural issues including pros and cons on the TPP pact will be the questions at issue in such constituencies. Both the ruling and opposition parties should select candidates who listen to the voices of farmers and reflect them in policymaking after the election. Sending as many such people as possible to the Diet will become a step toward changing the tide.