[By Takaaki Mitsuhashi, Economic Critic]
Takaaki Mitsuhashi
The proposals by the government’s Regulatory Reform Promotion Council released earlier this month are apparently aimed at dismantling the National Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Associations (ZEN-NOH) and breaking its businesses into pieces. It is highly likely that companies such as globally dominant foreign grain traders will come to purchase ZEN-NOH’s divisions related to supplying farm production materials. Japan’s agriculture could come under the control of foreign companies and the nation’s food security could be threatened. The proposed deregulation could ruin our country. I believe China also has its eye on ZEN-NOH.
The advisory panel’s proposals are irrational as they are attacking the ZEN-NOH for earning commissions by dealing materials needed for agricultural production, such as fertilizers. Such business practice is the norm and criticizing commissions means denying business of trading companies in general. Would the panel make similar proposals to trading firms? We can’t possibly think so. The panel is making such an unreasonable argument.
The proposals indicate companies’ intention to break up ZEN-NOH’s businesses and enter the agriculture-related market. This is typical “rent seeking,” in which companies lobby government ministries to distort laws and policies to work in their favor. The logic of blaming agricultural coops or ZEN-NOH for the failure to boost agricultural income is simple and easy to understand. This is why agricultural coops are made a scapegoat. However, weakening of ZEN-NOH will take away options from farmers, putting them at a disadvantage as a result.
Global trends always start from Great Britain. The country was a frontrunner of everything from industrial revolution, the gold standard under which the basic unit of currency is defined by a stated quantity of gold, to welfare state with well-established social welfare system and neoliberalism adopted during the time of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
It was this nation which recently decided to leave the European Union, signaling a shift away from globalization. And in the United States, Donald Trump, who vowed to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, won the presidential election. The world is now moving towards restricting globalization, but Japan is still insisting on maintaining the TPP and pushing forward with the reform of agricultural cooperatives that came up along with the TPP framework. Japan is going against the global trend and rushing ahead on globalization, being a lap behind.
When the government is going in the wrong direction, it is parliamentary democracy that gets it back on the right path. But lawmakers of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party are reluctant to raise an objection to the party’s executives, because what they worry about most under the current election system mainly based on single-seat constituencies is to get an official endorsement of the party. They should think seriously again why they became politicians.
In every country, business organizations lobby the government to adopt favorable policies. The Japanese agricultural cooperatives group should work more to convey farmers’ voices to lawmakers and challenge the government when it’s wrong. In order to carry their point, they should be eager enough to go even as far as purchasing a major broadcaster. Do they want to remain labeled as the very reason why famers’ income doesn’t increase?
It is never too late to fight to scrap the government’s agricultural coops reform which could ruin the nation. Farmers should remember that cooperatives were established to confront large companies.