Japanese farmers fear TPP to kill businesses and communities

(THE ASAHI SHIMBUN) Stripped of government protection, farmers across Japan fear their livelihoods and communities could collapse once they are exposed to cut-throat foreign competition when the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade deal takes effect.

Under the terms of the TPP, tariffs on beef, pork and other farm imports will be cut sharply. Japanese farmers have long been protected by high tariffs and government subsidies.

Japan will also be obliged to meet an import quota under the TPP. Basic agreement on the terms of the deal was reached Oct. 5 among 12 countries, including Japan, the United States and Australia.

“Local communities may fall apart,” Yutaka Ogura, a cattle farmer in Obihiro, Hokkaido, said of the implications of the deal.

The northernmost main island is the nation's largest producer of beef cattle. As of February, it had 505,000 head of cattle.

Ogura, 65, raises about 4,000 Holstein oxen on his 7-hectare farm.

Holstein herds are generally used to produce milk, but Ogura, like many others in Hokkaido, raises oxen for meat.

The breed represents more than 60 percent of the beef cattle population in Hokkaido.

With less fat compared with premium “wagyu” beef, they do not fetch such high prices.

Still, they are an important source of income for local farmers, Ogura said.

A flood of beef imports from the United States and Australia after the tariff reduction will hit his operation hard, he added.

He expressed concern that many cattle farmers, except for those operating on a large scale, could be forced out of business due to the foreign competition and inevitable price war.

That, he said, could accelerate an exodus of people from local communities.

Pig farmers and rice farmers also fear for the future.

“I am afraid domestic pork has little chance against foreign pork,” said Toshimitsu Naruke, a pig farmer in Katori, Chiba Prefecture.

Chiba Prefecture is the third-largest producer of hogs in Japan, with 680,000 animals being raised.

Naruke, 65, is a second-generation farmer who sends more than 5,000 pigs annually to the slaughter house.

He said his family was able to stay in business because of sales channels they established in the Tokyo metropolitan area, where they could count on stable prices for their products.

Naruke said his son, 38, began managing the family farm five years ago.

The farm switched to cheap rice for animal feed instead of imported pig feed as part of cost-cutting steps to survive in the market.

“I am worried about the generation after my son,” he said.

In Niigata Prefecture, the top rice producer in the nation, Kazuhachi Hosaka, voiced grave concern about the future prospects of his rice farm in Joetsu, which has 17 employees.

“I am so fearful,” said Hosaka, 56, who grows the premium Koshihikari variety and rice as animal feed on his 120-hectare plot.

About 35 percent of his plot is terraced paddy on the mountainside, which cost 20 percent more to cultivate than a parcel on a plain.

“Since I produce in the area where I live, preserving my rice paddy is tantamount to preserving the local community,” he said.

His rice fields expanded over the years as they include tracts that were rented to him by those who became too old to keep tending their plots.

Of his employees, seven are in their 20s through 30s.

“I may be forced to give up farming on areas that cost more,” he said.