TOKYO, Jan. 5 — Toru Nakaya, the chairman of Japan’s largest farmers’ group, has expressed determination to complete the group’s self-reform this year in New Year’s message.
Nakaya, the head of the Central Union of Agricultural Cooperatives, known as JA-ZENCHU, made a speech during the administrative body’s New Year gathering in Tokyo on Jan. 4.
Nakaya said three crises afflict the JA group and they center around: rural communities; JA businesses; and cooperatives.
Referring to an official deadline to complete the group’s reform in May 2019, Nakaya said: “We will step up efforts to complete our self-reform by the end of this year.”
ZENCHU has been a prime target of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s structural changes to open Japan’s long-protected agriculture sector to foreign competition.
Abe successfully passed legislation, which aims to remove the ZENCHU’s ability to audit and extract taxes from the nation’s nearly 700 agricultural cooperatives by 2018.
In doing so, Abe has sought to weaken the ZENCHU’s power to lobby the government, paving the way to slash high tariffs on agricultural products, compelling farmers to consolidate while improving efficiency and productivity in the sector.