The Agriculture and Forestry Division of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and LDP’s agricultural caucuses held a joint meeting on November 17 to discuss how to handle a radical proposal on agricultural reform, which was made on November 7 by an agricultural working group of Government’s advisory panel named as the Council for Promotion of Regulatory Reform.
LDP lawmakers’ objections and angers against the proposal erupted at the meeting. They fiercely opposed the proposal because it could interfere in business activities of the private sector.
A number of LDP’s agricultural caucus members urged that their ruling party should put forward its own proposal on the agricultural reform.
It is now anticipated that an adjustment of differing opinions between LDP and the administration will be prolonged.
It took more than two hours for LDP leaders to end the discussion at the November 17 meeting held at the LDP’s headquarter, where as many as 45 lawmakers made statements.
These lawmakers strongly opposed major points of the proposal made by the advisory panel; (i) abolition of a current system of consignment marketing operated by ZEN-NOH, a national business federation of agricultural cooperatives (JAs), and introduction of a new system of purchasing whole products from farmers to sell them in the market at its own risk, (ii) transformation of ZEN-NOH’s inputs supply business into a new organization, and (iii) reduction of a number of JAs providing financial business services to member farmers by half in three years by transferring the business of small-sized JAs to Norinchukin Bank or JAs’ national financial institute.
Lawmakers’ remarks at the November 17 meeting included: “The liberalism of Japan guaranteeing freedom of business activities will be dead if the panel’s proposal is accepted,” “How can members of the working group take responsibility for the result of their proposal?” and “The working group’s proposal has caused a great deal of trouble to our LDP.”