The ruling Liberal Democratic Party decided on setting up prefectural-level headquarters to implement specific measures to double farmers’ income in line with its 10-year strategy, LDP officials said Tuesday, June 25.
In a meeting held the same day, the LDP’s headquarters to revitalize agriculture and rural communities recognized the need to reflect the characteristics of each prefecture and product to meet the goal of increasing incomes.
“Measures to double income should differ across different prefectures which range from Hokkaido to Okinawa,” said Yasuhiro Ozato, director of LDP’s agriculture and forestry division and head of the headquarters’ secretariat. Ozato said the LDP will work closely with agricultural groups in each prefecture, stressing the importance of taking into consideration different conditions of each region and product.
The headquarters, headed by LDP secretary-general Shigeru Ishiba, was established earlier this month to come up with concrete plans for the strategy. Similar efforts are already being made by the government, but the LDP hopes to lead the discussion with priority on the interests of farmers, as it fears that the government’s plans could be affected by voices from the business community calling for drastic deregulation.
The prefectural headquarters will be made up of LDP members in each prefecture, including members of the national Diet and prefectural assembly. Some headquarters plan to hold their first meeting as early as this month to begin discussions on specific measures.
One of the key measures is the so-called farmland integration bank, a new intermediary farmland management agency which the government proposed to establish to speed up farmland consolidation. As the government plans to submit a bill to the extraordinary Diet session this autumn in relation to the establishment of the agency, the LDP wants to make sure that agricultural groups’ real needs are reflected in the bill.
In the headquarters’ meeting, some lawmakers expressed concerns over the government-led discussions, saying that a large gap exists between LDP’s agricultural policies and policy ideas coming out from the government’s Council for Industrial Competitiveness or Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy, both of which are chaired by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe with business leaders as main members.
(June 26, 2013)