Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) will reinforce its post-disaster reconstruction policy for agricultural production at some areas of Fukushima prefecture in fiscal 2017, which were stricken by the tsunami and TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster on March 11, 2011.
MAFF’s budget of 4.7 billion yen will be spent on a new policy program to support recovery of agriculture in the disaster-hit areas.
The program supports agriculture in a wide range of fields from production, distribution to marketing, particularly in order to guarantee quality and safety of farm products and improve their brand images.
The budget was originally allocated to Reconstruction Agency, while MAFF was authorized to be an execution office of the agricultural revitalization budget.
MAFF plans to implement the budget intensively for assisting farmers in the areas stricken by the disaster to accelerate their resumption of agricultural production.
Financial support will be provided to farmers and their organizations which take measures to assure the quality and safety of farm products by getting third-party certifications such as “Good Agricultural Practice (GAP)” and “Organic Japanese Agricultural Standard (JAS).”
These measures are expected to be useful for disaster-hit farmers to raise people’s brand recognition of their agricultural products and improve consumers’ confidence in their crops.
MAFF will partly meet costs occurred for various activities including monitoring of radioactive substance in agricultural products, safety self-inspections, and publicity activities for appealing safety of those products to consumers.
With a view to supporting marketing of their products, MAFF carries out a research so as to find out factors causing stagnated sales of agricultural commodities produced in the prefecture. The research findings will be used also by marketing specialists who are to provide local producers with guidance and suggestion on development of new markets.