Bags of hulled rice at Echigo Farm’s processing plant in Higashikanbara, Japan. Echigo Farm, which sells its organic rice at a premium, is a rare upstart in the Japanese rice business.
For decades, Japan has defended its 778 percent tariffs on rice with a kind of religious zeal. Rice is a sacred crop, the government has argued, not open to trade negotiations. Its farmers are not just defenders of a proud agrarian heritage, but form the nation’s spiritual center as well.
Hardly, says Hiromitsu Konsho, a young organic rice farmer in this rice-growing region of Niigata. Many Japanese farmers have all but given up on their tiny plots, he says. They earn most of their income elsewhere, farming only part time and paying little attention to improving their crops.
Yet, kept on life support by subsidies, production controls and tariffs, these farmers grow mediocre rice year after year, he says. Now an increasing amount of this rice has nowhere to go, as Japanese favor bread over their traditional staple. The government will soon raise subsidies that encourage farmers to divert their rice to animal feed.
More enterprising farms face difficulty in expanding their plots or experimenting with more sustainable cultivation, steps that would let them better compete in a free market.
Hulled rice, at left, and rejected rice and small rocks, right.
Mr. Konsho points to his Echigo Farm, a rare upstart in rural Japan, whose organically grown rice sells at high-end retailers as far away as Tokyo and Singapore. It faced difficulties at first, but now its rice has become a hit, fetching 5,500 yen per kilogram, or about $24 a pound — almost 10 times the market price.
“It’s high time to revive Japanese rice farming,” Mr. Konsho said.
Echigo Farm almost did not get off the ground 10 years ago, when Mr. Konsho first came to Niigata from a Tokyo office job with the idea of starting an organic rice farm. Bureaucrats tried to block his land leases. Local farmers threw rocks into his rice paddies and flung salt at him, an insult reserved here for evil spirits.
“The idyllic rice farms most city people think of are things of the past,” Mr. Konsho said. “Rice farming is collapsing, and not because of free trade.”
The recent debate over how much Japan should open up its agricultural sector to join a proposed free trade group led by the United States, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, is opening up new rifts in Japan, rifts that defy traditional urban-rural divides. Increasingly, urban Japanese — and even some farmers — are questioning exactly what those tariffs protect.
Japan has signed only a few limited free trade agreements, thanks to its tough stance on agricultural tariffs. Consumers pay more than twice the global average price for rice, and four times more for wheat.
Still, Japan won’t give an inch on farming tariffs, Akira Amari, Japan’s trade minister, declared at the latest talks for the Trans-Pacific Partnership last month, holding up talks at the 11th hour. The T.P.P., which involves the United States, Japan and 10 other Pacific Rim nations, would create the world’s biggest free trade zone.
Tens of thousands risk losing their livelihoods if farming tariffs are brought down, critics said at a recent national rally against the T.P.P. in Tokyo.
“How is the government going to protect all the small-time farmers scattered across the country?” said Kazumori Yamazaki, a rice farmer from Ishikawa in central Japan.
Shigeaki Okamoto, 52, who runs a successful fruit and vegetable farm in Aichi, in central Japan, says Japanese farmers can compete without tariffs. Unlike rice, Japan-grown vegetables face global competition, with most import levies between 0 percent and 3 percent. Still, four-fifths of the vegetables the Japanese consume are homegrown. Vegetable growers on average earn far more than rice farmers.
Indeed, Japan’s stiff protections on rice no longer have much to do with protecting farmers, Mr. Okamoto says. They instead protect a sprawling network of farm co-ops that has leeched off farmers and stymied their efforts to innovate, he says.
That network, as Mr. Okamoto likes to say, is bureaucracy run amok. About 216,000 people work in agricultural cooperatives in Japan, under the umbrella of the Japan Agricultural Group, or J.A. There is one co-op employee for every two full-time rice farmers. The central government’s ¥2.3 trillion farming budget for the current year is seven times the budget to oversee the nonagricultural 99 percent of the Japanese economy.
Much of that money makes its way to these co-ops, charged with administering production controls on rice, as well as its sales and distribution. Under that system, farmers receive subsidies in exchange for limiting the amount of rice they grow, which keeps rice prices high and small, part-time rice farmers in business. The average Japanese rice farmer spends only about 30 days a year on agricultural work, and over half of all farmers till less than a hectare each of land, about 2.5 acres, according to the latest census data.
Workers at Echigo Farm prepare gift packages of rice, a tradition at the end of the year. The farm’s organic rice is popular.
The tiny farms find it impossible to achieve economies of scale. But that suits the J.A. just fine, because the organization gets commission income from collecting and selling their crop — something larger, dedicated farms could do on their own. The J.A. also makes money selling small farmers the machinery, fertilizer and pesticides necessary for growing rice part time.
In addition, the J.A. acts as financier to Japanese farmers, handling deposits, loans and insurance in a side business that has made it one of Japan’s largest financial organizations.
Japan could make a full switch to direct-income subsidies, like the United States and European Union have done, which would at least protect farmers against international competition without the need for tariffs. But that would mean the J.A. would lose its commissions and its political clout.
The rise of entrepreneurial farmers like Mr. Konsho or Mr. Okamoto would have the same impact because they do not rely on the J.A. for sales or equipment.
Mr. Okamoto refused to work with the J.A. in expanding his farm, focusing on produce like strawberries, which he is able to sell independently. “Japan’s agricultural policy hasn’t made farmers strong — it’s made them weak to the point of collapse,” he said.
But the biggest problems lie in rice cultivation, Mr. Okamoto says. Most Japanese rice farmers have no incentive to raise the quality of rice they grow, because J.A. buys their harvest regardless of quality. Years of neglect have made Japanese rice not just more costly, but also lower in quality — and more dependent on fertilizer and pesticides — than much of the rice grown in the United States, Southeast Asia or China, industry insiders say.
Regulations that discourage new entrants have made the sector unattractive to younger Japanese. Three-quarters of Japanese farmers are over 60 years old.
One thing that could help entrepreneurial farmers, Mr. Okamoto says, could be the “special economic zones” that are part of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s plans to revive the economy. Under those plans, several areas across Japan could experiment with easing regulations, helping farmers to tap outside financing to invest and to expand their fields. Mr. Abe has also said that the government will do away with production controls of rice in 2018.
Experts remain skeptical, however, that there will be real change. Production controls live on even under Mr. Abe’s new plans, albeit as subsidies to farmers who switch to other crops or produce rice for livestock.
Politicians cannot afford to ignore the J.A. The organization is able to deliver votes in rural areas, especially among legions of part-time rice farmers — not to mention dole out much-coveted jobs for farmers’ children.
Kazuhito Yamashita, an agricultural expert at the Canon Institute for Global Studies in Tokyo, said that at Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations Japan could be forced to offer concessions to the Americans on some farm products, like wheat and sugar. Japan could even expand the small quota of rice imports it accepts each year to appease the United States and other rice producers.
“But Japan will never free up its rice market in the real sense,” he said. “There are too many vested interests.”
Toyokazu Wakatsuki, 47, a farmer whose family has farmed rice for generations in Aga, was initially among local farmers skeptical of Echigo Farm. But now he helps Mr. Konsho run it.
“We’ve been growing rice for the J.A., not for the consumer,” Mr. Wakatsuki said. “Farmers need to start taking the initiative.”
