研究ノート

Food self-sufficiency and foodsovereignty: Examining the fallacy ofthe‘change in taste and preferences’mantra in the evolution of the Japaneserice system.
Rangarirai Gavin Muchetu

Background and context to Japanese agriculture
Following the end of the Second World War ( W W I I ) a nd its eventual
occupation by the Supreme Command of the Allied Powers (SCAP), Japan
carried out a land reform which drastically reconfigured its agricultural sector(Dore, 2012). By 1955, agriculture was contributing approximately 18% to the
GDP while employing approximately 41% of the working population (Teruoka,2008). This was achieved even though only 16% of the total surface area ofJapan comprises agricultural land, and between 1950-1955, approximately six
million households held an average of 2acres of arable land. Approximately 59%
of this land was put under intensive rice production during that period,
fertilizers and irrigation facilities were utilised (ibid ). Wheat and somehorticultural crops were also grown but in smaller quantities, and livestock
production was limited, mainly because Japan has low-quality pastures. Up until
the 1970s, Japan was food self-sufficient.
The Japanese agricultural sector has undergone various changes ever since.
As Japan industrialised, the gap between urban and rural incomes resulted inmass migration (Teruoka, 2008; Dore, 2012). The situation was worsened by thecomplex agrarian structure and the progress of productive industrial sector
which drew most of the populations from rural areas. As the number of people
relying on agricultural production (rice) declined, so did the population of rural
areas. Currently, agriculture accounts for less than 2.6% of the GDP (MAFF,
2018) and Japan is no longer food self-sufficient (self-sufficiency stands at 36%;83

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研究ノートsee section on page 9). Given the volatility of international food markets on
which it heavily relies, it is at risk of waking up one day as a food insecure
nation. Thus, government and policymakers should bring food security (within
the food sovereignty framework) to the fore of discussion.
While most of the literature on self-sufficiency is in Japanese language, thefew strands available in English have avoided using a political economy
approach to u nderst a nd fo od sel f- su f f iciency i n developed cou nt r ies .
Furthermore, very few studies have conceptualised food self-sufficiency within
the concepts of food sovereignty and the political economy of food regimes. This
note adds to the food sovereignty debate, but unlike most studies, we present
the political economy of food sovereignty for a developed country like Japan. We
enter this discussion fully aware of the overwhelming rate of globalisation andthe difficulties involved in pursuing self-sufficiency in agriculture when global
agricultural prices are falling. The main argument that we push is that every
nation-territory should be able to produce a significant amount of food throughits local farmers and locally obtained resources.
This note exposes the potential of food insecurity when a country over-relies
on international trade for its food. We also go deeper and discuss the need tomaintain a significant level of domestic food production. We do this using thefood regime and food sovereignty framework and show how the issues in theJapanese agricultural sector are not isolated. We discuss various periods in foodproduction and superimpose them on the geopolitical power relations and formsof agricultural production and consumption. In that respect, the note begins bydiscussing the evolution of Japanese agriculture, food security, and therelationship with food sovereignty. The discussion of food regimes and foodsovereignty explores the change of taste and preferences arguments and how
they are affected by Japan’s food culture.

Food security in Japan
Food security debates are popular in the developing countries. However, in
the aftermath of the food crisis of 2007-08, it has become a serious concern for
the entire world. Japan encountered a food security scare in the 1993 nationwide
cold winter which drastically reduced rice yield quantities forcing the country
to rely on imports the following year and until now. In addition to the challenges
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Food self-sufficiency and food sovereignty: Examining the fallacy of the‘change in taste and preferences’mantra in the evolution of the Japanese rice system.

of food production on a global scale (production in one locality followed byredistribution to the rest of the world), climate change issues and unstablegeopolitical landscapes have increased the volatility of food security worldwide.
Land grabs, land markets, monopolisation of agricultural marketing as well as
agricultural technology and GMOs can be read as signs of the need to revisit
the concept (McMichael, 2014). Shocks such as the 1993 poor harvest in Japanor the 2007/8 food crisis should justify food self-sufficiency-oriented debates.
Although Japan has low arable land (12-16% of total land mass), it should strive
for food sovereignty or at least a higher level than is currently the case. The
debate has developed from food security to a more political-economy-appealing‘food sovereignty’.
Classical food sovereignty is a system that recognises the peasant/farmer as
the central subject in the current food regime crisis and who can develop a
progmatic approach to restore the viability of the countryside (McMichael,2009). It entails a struggle against unequal economic relations and dispossession
through land grabbing as well as promoting agro-ecological production.
Although the debate has traditionally been pushed by developing countries inreaction to the structural adjustment economics in the 1990s and liberalised
markets, developed countries can no longer ignore it. It varies in form/scope
between developed and developing countries. If any of the nationalistic oriented
policies pursued by the USA are to go by, it will be too risky for a nation to rely
on food markets dominated by just a few players. In July 1973, the USA
imposed an embargo on soybean exports, and this greatly affected Japanesefood markets which, at that time, imported 93% of their soybeans from theUSA. Given that Japan is conscious of the negative consequences of over relying
on the USA for its soybeans, it is expected that they would support the foodsovereignty debate.
Japan is a small island with limited resources but exports a lot of cars, vehicle
spares, and IT products. This may justify its continued over-reliance on tradeand food imports to sustain itself. Moreover, with the ‘change in consumer
preferences’ towards foods that it does not actually produce, Japan is poised fora major problem. In later sections, we describe how this change in taste andpreferences can be explained through the analogy of a drug dealer and druguser. The drug dealer hooks a drug user on a drug by providing it at a very
cheap price, but later begins to increase the price of the drug. Food is provided
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研究ノートat cheap prices such that a country itself stops producing it and predominantly
relies on markets or puts itself entirely at the mercy of the markets. This is thesame argument as made by McMichael (2014) who says that the global foodregime results in the suppression of agricultural product prices in rural areas
followed by a shock-increase once the regime is in control of the food markets.
The 2007/8 global food crisis can be cited as an example in this case. The foodregime theory pushed by McMichael and Freedman (1989) contends that there
were deliberate efforts to centralise food production even before World War I.

The Food Control System
A discussion of Japan’s food security would not be complete without a brief
conversation of the Food Control System established in 1942; and how foodsovereignty, cultural preservation, small rice community culture, traditionallandscape, and symbolic food crop principles were at the centre of farmers’
resistance (Francks, 1998, p. 13). Legally, all rice supplies were organised
through the government up to 1968. In 1969, a proportion rice production could
be sold directly by the licenced organisations to the wholesalers. This began theconvergence towards neo-liberal agricultural markets. Government-marketedrice (GM) was that rice sold exclusively through the government: farmers would
sel l r ice to t he gover n ment t h rough t hei r co operat ives or prov i ncia lorganisations, before the government sold it on to retailers and consumers.
There was also Voluntarily Marketed (VM) rice, which was any rice that wasmarketed to retailers and consumers through government-approved dealers.
From 1969, the accredited rice handlers, comprising cooperatives at prefecturaland district levels, could now sell rice to the retailers as well as consumers. The
price of VM was based on the price of GM. However, as the neo-liberal agenda
took root, Free Market rice (FM) emerged, in this case comprising anyone withrice to sell, from producers to cooperatives, and any company could sell theirrice to retailers or consumers. It is vital to note that rice took prominence inthe ‘Food Control System’ to such an extent that it would not be nonsensical tocall the regime the ‘rice control system’. This signifies the importance of rice inJapan and hence the need for a stronger stand when it comes to its production(Mishima, 1992, p. 43).
Although the law stabilised the rice markets, there were outcries inside and86

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Food self-sufficiency and food sovereignty: Examining the fallacy of the‘change in taste and preferences’mantra in the evolution of the Japanese rice system.

outside Japan at the disbanding of the law since Japan had joined the General
Agreements on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) in 1955, and hence had to abide by
the rules to maintain unfettered markets. Francks (1998) supports this, writingthat much of the pressure to open rice markets emanated from the outside.
Disputes with the USA over trade in beef and oranges are well documented
exa mples ( Fra ncks , 19 9 8 , p. 11). She reports t hat t he US R ice M illers
Association was one of the largest companies outside Japan to push for freemovement of rice between the US and Japan. The politicians were considering
it while facing much domestic resistance, mainly from the farmers throughtheir cooperatives. The government ultimately accepted the gradual opening of
the markets. When the law was eventually passed, the farmers were thegreatest losers since the cooperatives were representatives of the farmers’
voices.
The new law simply removed the need to sell rice to the government; thus,
government control of supply and demand and thereby of prices, as well as
control of the channels through which rice could be marketed, ceased. This
resembled more the FM rice during the food control system era. Although thecooperatives had lost out when the old law was disbanded, they continued toplay an important role in the new food law in which they became the major
private channels through which rice was sold. The new law gave more work to
the cooperatives as they could make their own decisions regarding the amounts
and timing of offloading their rice on the market. This, however, had a negative
effect on the rice markets as they became highly unstable, thus increasing thechances of food insecurity and infringement of food sovereignty. Cooperatives,
who were now at the forefront of these markets, faced greater marketing risk
which they had formerly shared with the government. Additionally, with
unfettered markets came large-scale commercial farmers who had the power todrive out ‘less efficient’ rice producers. The rate was accelerated by increasing
competition and lack of price control. The new law greatly disadvantaged those
farmers who were represented by the cooperative and an increasing number
were driven out of rice production, hence affecting rice food security and foodsovereignty.

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研究ノートThe food sovereignty debate
Food sovereignty is a relatively new term in relation to food security. Food
security describes a situation in which a group of people have access to
sufficient, safe, and nutritious food in a specified period. Food sovereignty
broadens this concept, it is concerned with all the issues in food security, butalso requires that the same group of people should have the right to producethat food and access food-producing resources. The former requires that anation disregard the source and price of food as well as the knowledge of who
paid for it, while the latter focuses on the superiority of own-food production
over trade (La Via Campesina, 2007). Originally, food sovereignty debates werepremised on a drive to re-establish the peasantry. This makes it more difficult
to discuss food sovereignty in the context of a developed country such as Japan
where the peasantry is said to have disappeared (Bernstein, 2003). However, therural farmers in Japan, regardless of relative advancements in technology andthe use of machinery for agricultural production, can still be argued to possess
various other characteristics of peasants. The establishment of La Via
Campesina by farmers from Europe, North America, and other developed
countries seems to support the persistence of the peasantry in developed
countries. Japanese farmers possess several peasant-like characteristics such asa heavy reliance on family labour; small land sizes; and a low participation ratein the rice marketing system. In this note, we think of them as mechanised
peasants.
As highlighted above, rice production has significantly decreased over the last
50 years, not just due to lack of farmers capacity, but due to the higher cost of
producing rice, high land costs, and over-investment in farm machinery (Kako,
Gemma, & Ito, 1997). Moreover, as stipulated by free market principles, if riceimports are cheaper than locally produced rice, then more rice will be imported(see Figure 1). Although rice consumption has slightly decreased over the years,
its importation has balanced local production and ensured food security for theJapanese. The opening up of the rice market in 1992 under the name ‘The
Basic Direction of New Policies for Food Agriculture and Rural Areas’ marked
a turning point as the government withdrew its efforts to stabilise the rice
markets through such instruments as the rice diversion policy, rice distribution
policy, and structural improvement policy (ibid). There are several other factors
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Food self-sufficiency and food sovereignty: Examining the fallacy of the‘change in taste and preferences’mantra in the evolution of the Japanese rice system.

14000
12000

2000

10000
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1500

6000

1000

4000
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2000
0

Rice imports (1K tons)

2500

0
1961
1963
1965
1967
1969
1971
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1985
1987
1989
1991
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1995
1997
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Rice prod & Wheat imports (1K tons)

Figure 1: Production and importation of rice and wheat in Japan (1960-2014)

Wheat (1K tons) Imports

Rice (1K tons) Production

Rice (1K tons) Imports

Source: FAOstats (2018)that had significant effects on the decrease in rice demand, such as women’s
increased participation in society, strategies by food companies in promotion
through media (e.g. TV). However, the effect of opening up of the rice market
cannot be ignored as it marked the point at which the Japanese rice markets
surrendered to the wills of the global food regime.
Friedmann coined the term food regime to refer to the global food production
system and argued that it resembles a government of its own, with global rules,
policies, and governors whose power transcends nationalistic boundaries(Friedmann, 1993; McMichael, 2009). In the discussion of food regimes, foodcrisis and the need for food sovereignty, it is important to note the continued
concentration of power within the food regime towards the USA and Europe.
There used to be a clash between the global north and global south, but thepower relations have reconfigured within the global-north itself as observed in
the case of Japan (McMichael, 2014). It can be argued that the need for foodsovereignty was necessitated by the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) push
for transnational agribusinesses (McMichael, 2014, p. 2). La Via Campesina(2000) calls the WTO rules ‘an imposition that has negatively affected rural
livelihoods, cultural norms and the environment ’. The concept of foodsovereignty contests David Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage which isthe fulcrum or pith of international trade and globalisation.
The food security movement is not a plea to re-establish the peasantry, but it
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研究ノートis about reducing the commodification of food which eventually threatens foodsecurity. Of concern for Japan, as addressed by this note, is not necessarily theincrease in the amount of rice being imported (instead of being produced
locally), but the need to thoroughly peruse the supposed change in consumer
preference in favour of Western foods such as wheat products. As shown in
Figure 1, a decrease in rice production has been offset by a steady increase inwheat imports since the 1960s. The data presented asks three questions ofwhether it is a case of cheaper imports ahead of expensive local production; or acase of rational consumer behaviour as they attempt to maximise utility; oralternatively, is it a global adjustment within the food regime system? The data
shown in Figure 1 play well into the food regime and food sovereignty debate.

Debunking the change in taste and preference rhetoric
The conventional microeconomic theory provides that consumer taste andpreference a re a function of dema nd for a good. I n this sense, severa lcontemporary scholars on Japan have partly attributed the decrease in riceproduction and consumption to changes in the taste, preferences, and eating
habits of Japanese society. However, how does a society change in this respect?
Is it a natural process? What are the drivers of these changes? In general, fooddemand takes two forms, demand for nutrition or demand for taste, and mostmicro-economic analyses focus on the latter (Becker, 1965). The demand fortaste is affected by the income, household size, age of household head, culture,and rate of urbanisation, amongst other factors (Drichoutis & Lazaridis, 2008).
This means that a Japanese consumer chooses between consuming rice or (forexample) wheat depending on the above factors. Given the rapid rural-urban
migration and massive improvements in disposable income during the 1960s, it
is easier to understand how consumers would change their tastes from inferior
goods (whose demand declines with rise in income, like rice or wheat) towards
normal goods (whose demand increases with income, like meat products) (Kako,
Gemma, & Ito, 1997, p. 194). However, this does not adequately explain thechange from rice to wheat consumption since both are essentially inferior
goods.
McMichael and Friedmann provide some answers through their work on thefood regime theory. This theory explains the global agricultural system and
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Food self-sufficiency and food sovereignty: Examining the fallacy of the‘change in taste and preferences’mantra in the evolution of the Japanese rice system.

how it fits within the global capitalist economy through the control andmanipulation of national agricultural sectors (Friedmann & McMichael, 1989). It
argues that the way food is produced and distributed worldwide does notentirely depend on the supply and demand of those products but rather on laws,
governments, and global policies that exist to govern this regime. There arebasically three distinguishable food regimes (1870s-1930s, 1940s-1970s, and1980s-present), and the supposed beginning of the Japanese change (1960s) intaste and preferences coincides with the second. The second food regime wascharacterised by massive outflows of surplus food from the USA to selected
formal and informal empires in post-colonial states where they supported
developing countries in excha nge for cooperation aga inst communism(McMichael, 2009, pp. 141-147; Friedmann, 1993). In the aftermath of World War
II, Japan became a vantage point for the USA’s fight against communism inAsia. By 1952, the SCAP’s presence in Japan had brought massive changes tothe economy (tax reforms, destruction of the Zaibatsu, liberalisation); politics(new constitution, demilitarisation); society, and culture. With income rising andrural-urban migration at its peak, Japan was encouraged to internalise themodel of national agro-industrialisation, instituting land reform to dampen
peasant revolt since the land reform was inevitable (see McMichael (2009, p.
141); Dore (2012)). The rationale for this was very simple: the New Deal Farm
Programs in the USA were very successful and were producing a surplus thatneeded to be disposed off somewhere (even by mercantile means) (Friedmann,
1993, pp. 31-32). The second food regime was formulated between 1945 and1949, and in this period the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT,
now known as the World Trade Organisation-WTO) was established. Following
WWII, a rapid shift occurred in the food order, and grains from the USA began
to flow towards formerly self-sufficient countries (ibid).
Examination of these factors leads us to interrogate the simple narrative thatchanges in consumer tastes and preferences account for the rise in consumptionof foreign foods. Scholars seem to overlook the works of Friedmann and
McMichael (1989) on food regimes and the existence of a ‘food government’
which has specified rules and laws on how food should be produced anddistributed on a global scale. The contemporary issues within the food regime
and sovereignty discourse also include i) food price inflations, ii) dumping of foodand the fall of farm prices, and iii) ecological issues. Other scholars have
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研究ノートproposed the international/global convergence of tastes theory, in which one
culture affects other cultures and vice versa, and hence taste and preferences
are affected by an equal exchange of world cultures. This theory seems tooverlook the presence of dominant cultures. The truth is that some cultures are
so aggressive that they not only dominate others but even impose theirproducts on the less dominant one (which becomes a market for the products ofthe dominant culture). La Via Campesina also argues that the GATT/WTO’s
policies provide to local consumers cheap, low-quality food products produced
under environmentally and labour unfriendly conditions. Thus, the change intaste and preference is involuntary and works as a culturally destructive
movement (La Via Campensino, 2000). Indeed, people and their culture areembedded in the food they eat, and as such, a Japanese society that does notconsume its locally produced rice would seem to have lost part of its culture.

Food Culture in Japan
Around the Meiji period (after the seclusion period of Edo), through its
interaction with the outside world such as China and Korea, Japan developed its
own special cuisine which set its food culture (and its culture in general) apartfrom other Asian countries. The food that came to be known as Japanese
included rice and fish because these were the readily available foods that could
be locally produced. Such meals were called ichiju-san-sai because they
comprised one bowl of rice, one bowl of vegetables, one bowl of soup, and one
bowl of protein (usually fish). This formed the basis of Japanese food culture
which can still be observed in contemporary Japanese restaurants countrywide.
Japanese cuisine (particularly the koshihikari rice and sake) were added to the
UNESCO list of intangible cultural heritages in 2013 (Pons, 2015).
Both food preparation and consumption were not merely a means to replenish
the body, but it was also an art and a science. The care and detail that went
into the preparation, the utensils used to cook, and the cutlery used when eatingwere immaculate. Meals were carefully planned so that each meal contained
the right amounts of important nutrients and minerals to form a balanced diet.
A balanced diet meant a healthy society with very low instances of obesity andless strain on the health system and economy. This affected the whole ofJapanese culture. However, with the entry of Western foods, much of this is92

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Food self-sufficiency and food sovereignty: Examining the fallacy of the‘change in taste and preferences’mantra in the evolution of the Japanese rice system.

changing (one might argue for the worse). Food was a definite and appropriate
channel for understanding Japanese life. Cooked rice is called gohan in Japanese,a word which may be used to refer to the whole meal, thus signifying theimportance of rice. The same goes for the wine (sake); although this type ofbeverage is brewed across Asia, in Japan rice wine is called nihonshu, meaning
Japanese wine and hence signifying the uniqueness of the culture in a beverage(Pons, 2015). The various international deals and free trade negotiations whichshifted taste and preferences have come as a threat, not only to food security,
but to the unique Japanese food culture and festivals, rituals, the environment,
and the Shinto religion. Food also affects politics as evidenced in the keen
government interest in agriculture and food-related policies.

Japan’s food self-sufficiency ratio
The MAFF has been attempting to promote food self-sufficiency as testified
by the last 20 annual reports on food, agriculture, and rural areas. This reflects
how government efforts towards food sovereignty despite presenting the policy
as food self-sufficiency throughout its various policy documents. The food selfsufficiency index, which is a ratio of total domestic supply to the total domestic
consumption, can be calculated on a production basis or a calorie level basis.
The calorie-based index is (expressed as a percentage) the amount of daily
calorie supply from locally produced food over the calorie supply from all foodsources. The higher the value, the more self-sufficient the country is. The
production-based index is a ratio of the value of national output in relation to
the value of the requirements of the country. Most of the MAFF reportunderscored the accuracy of the calorie value (which stood at 36% in 2012) since
the production-based index (which stood at 66% in 2012) depends on the market
conditions where price fluctuates exist (Godo, 2013). In the 1970s, this caloriebased index exceeded 70%, and then fluctuated at around 40% in the 1990s and2000s (Figure 2a).
Until the 1980s, the Japanese government had confidence and trust in thestrength of the global markets, and it made more sense to apply David Ricardo’s
theory of ‘comparative advantage’ which encourages countries which had an
advantage in food production to engage in trade with Japan through suchchannels as the Trans-Pacific Partnerships. The 2007/8 world food crisis
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研究ノートFigure 2: (a) Production/calorie-based food self-sufficiency rates in Japan(b) Food self-sufficiency rates of developed countries (1960-2016)

Source: (Japan Times, 2017)brought the need to be analytical of open markets and also the need for more
self-sufficiency efforts by the year 2020. Increasingly, people consumed Western
foods ( 洋 食 yoshoku) which affected Japanese traditional food ( 和 食 washoku).
Godo (2013) further argues that changes in land-use patterns had a huge effecton rice production and calculation of the calorie-based value. A considerable
number of farmers began rearing cattle, initially using own grown stock-feeds,
but they later had to rely on cheaper stock-feeds from the USA, Canada, andAustralia. Almost all the stock-feeds used by one of the farmers we interviewed
in Osaka prefecture were either from the USA or Canada. Furthermore, noneof the livestock produced using imported stock feeds are included in thecalculation of the calorie-based value. Thus, the increasing use of imported stock
feeds translates to a lower calorie-based self-sufficiency index. Currently, Japanca n produce 3 6% of it s food requ i rement s wh i le i mpor t i ng up to 6 0 %(Nishikawa, 2014). This simply means that Japan’s food sovereignty index is thelowest among the developed countries (Figure 2b).
A lt h o u g h t h e M A F F (w it h t h e h e l p o f t h e Ja p a n e s e A g r i c u lt u r a l
Cooperatives-JA) has been trying to encourage farmers to produce more local
rice, wheat, and soybean, their policies are yet to bear meaningful fruit. They
specifically targeted these three crops because they have a high-calorie value,and since the sufficiency index is calorie-based, targeting these three would
have a higher impact on the self-sufficiency ratio. While good policies have been
implemented, such as double cropping, regulating imports to encourage local
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Food self-sufficiency and food sovereignty: Examining the fallacy of the‘change in taste and preferences’mantra in the evolution of the Japanese rice system.

production, subsidies, and research & development into alternative uses of rice,
the greatest challenge has been the high cost of producing rice (or wheat andsoybean) in Japan (Godo, 2013). Thus, given the neo-liberal economic modelpursued by the state, it would always make sense to import cheaper rice andwheat . The government a lso needs to go beyond the state- cooperative
relationships and include the local government authorities. Agricultural
productivity varies according to prefectural, municipal and local community
conditions. Information about these conditions is known in greater detail by the
local governments and hence the national government needs to acknowledge
and utilize them. Topical Japanese rural issues such as the aging farmers andyounger farmers; full time a nd part-time farmers; family farming a ndcommercia l fa rming ca n best be solved through massive decreases in
information asymmetries. The use of the local government authorities
throughout the 47 prefectures can solve a significant number of asymmetries(MHRI, 2017, p. 6).
The M A FF has a lso attempted to in f luence consumer behaviour byconducting several ‘buy Japanese rice’ campaigns. Locally produced rice has
been marketed as better tasting with by-products of a higher quality thanimported ones. Additionally, funding has been allocated to promotions such as
the Kokupo project, in which points were given to consumers who purchased
Japanese rice (Godo, 2013). Documentaries, TV programmes, and leaflets(Figure 3) are some of the ways in which the government is trying to promotea ‘buy Japanese food’ campaign.
Figure 3: MAFF brochure encouraging consumption of more domestic products

Source: MAFF (2018, p. 15)95

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研究ノートThe effect of these programs is yet to be substantial. Approximately 90% of
all the wheat consumed in Japan is imported. This wheat is mainly used tomake bread and (Chinese) noodles while Japanese-produced noodles such as
u d o n use 70 % of t he loca l ly produced wheat . Th is ref lect s t he heav ydependence on the international/global market for food in Japan which isparticularly dangerous if any global shocks such as the 2008 food crisis should
occur. These shocks will occur more frequently as the neo-liberal production
progresses (Amin, 2018).

Conclusion
We conclude that the opening of the rice market had a negative effect on local
rice production as demand for it dropped. Hence, the overall demand for rice
has decreased as people eat cheaper imported rice as well as favouring more
Westernised meals. We have argued that the more Japanese society relies oninternational markets, the more they risk food insecurity, environmental
degradation, and cultural decay. Most importantly, using the political economy
approach, this article played down the ‘changes in taste and preferences theory’
and, concludes that it is not a natural phenomenon whereby consumers
voluntarily choose wheat over rice, but is, rather, part of the bigger global
political economy of the food regimes movement. The roots of this global
movement rest in the occupation of Japan after WWII and the subsequent
introduction of Western culture (food products and lifestyle). The government,
the JA, the local government authorities and all stakeholders need to discuss/
acknowledge food sovereignty issues within the framework of food regimes.

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Food self-sufficiency and food sovereignty: Examining the fallacy of the‘change in taste and preferences’mantra in the evolution of the Japanese rice system.

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Food self-sufficiency and food sovereignty: Examining the fallacy of the‘change in taste and preferences’mantra in the evolution of the Japanese rice system.

Abstract

Food self-sufficiency and foodsovereignty: Examining the fallacy ofthe‘change in taste and preferences’mantra in the evolution of the Japaneserice system.
Rangarirai Gavin Muchetu
Although agricultural contribution to the Japanese national output has been
under 3% in the last decade, it remains a vital basis for rural reproduction (foodsovereignty), cultural symbolism, and national environmental preservation.
Despite the recent diversification of people’s diet, rice - grown on approximately
40% of the cultivated land - remains a major source of carbohydrates. However,rice production has been decreasing due to trade reforms that saw more
imports from abroad from the late 1980s, inciting food sovereignty debates
among scholars. On the other hand, food sovereignty inspired efforts have been
made by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. Several policy
reform propositions aim to increase rice production to 50% self-sufficiency levels
by 2020 (Godo, 2013). Consumer economics place the change in taste andpresences at the fore of the fall in the consumption of rice in Japan. However,
we argue that this narrative ignores the omnipresent hegemony of the foodregime. This research note examines and discusses the evolution of the riceproduction, consumption and exchange within the food sovereignty thus
providing an alternative view on the change in tastes and preferences discourse
as a chief factor of decreases in rice consumption.
Key words
Food sovereignty, food security, self-sufficiency, rice production, taste and preferences

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