As part of my proposed research into the future of agricultural employment in the United Kingdom, I will need to look at the historical issues over land ownership. I want to show how this history might put the country in a poor position with regards to any attempted trend towards smaller, more sustainable farms and away from larger farms with their increased environmental damage and greater social inequality.
Land ownership is not a common topic of discussion in the UK, which makes books such as Kevin Cahill’s Who Owns Britain all the more interesting. Cahill has much experience as a wealth and rich list researcher, having worked on the original Sunday Times Rich List and many others since.
I am currently applying to carry out research into the effects of energy input decline on agricultural employment. I wanted to resurrect this blog as somewhere that I can not only write publicly and hopefully gain useful feedback, but also somewhere to record all the useful media, references and stories that I come across.
“Shut Down the G8 Summit” Alternative sound demonstration – Shinjuku
Following Saturday’s meeting and speech by Susan George, the “working groups” from “Shut Down the G8 Summit” met other demonstrators in the heavy rain at Kashigawa Park on Sunday afternoon.
Here there was a brief rally, with Susan George among others giving short speeches:
On the first full day of anti-G8 action in Tokyo yesterday, there were workshops held throughout the city from 1pm, consisting of various “working groups”. These were then followed by a General Meeting at 6pm, which I attended. The meeting was held in Bunkyo Kumin Center near Kasuga station and the main speaker was Susan George of ATTAC France and Transnational Institute. She is a long-time activist and the author of a number of books on poverty including How the Other Half Dies (1976).
The first hour of the meeting was given to introductions and the reports by the “working groups”. These groups covered issues such as trade, sexual discrimination and American bases on Okinawa and Guam among others.
This year’s annual Group of 8 summit is almost upon us. From 7th-9th July, the leaders of the G8 countries will meet at Lake Toyako, on the northern island of Hokkaido, here in Japan.
Over the next two weeks I am going to be writing about various G8-related events, with special regard to world agriculture, domestic Japanese issues, and the alter-globalization/anti-capitalism movement’s reaction to the current world crises.
For a very detailed summary of issues regarding this summit please read “The 2008 G8 on Hokkaido, a Strategic Assessment”, written by activists, scholars and writers based in the United States and Western Europe.
It is a long piece, but reading it would be time well-spent. It actually preempts a lot of what I wanted to say in this post, (even down to my not-so-original title) and so I will intersperse my writing with some quotes from it.
Things are looking worrying for livestock farmers in Japan. The price of corn on the world market has risen rapidly and the Japanese government has responded by increasing the floor price of domestic, corn-fed pork and beef for a second time this year.
Japan imports almost all of its animal feed and so the price of corn here is being further affected by the rising price of oil, in the form of increased freight fees. It imports 93% of its corn from the United States. The other main ingredient in animal feed is soya, which is also mostly imported. From Bloomberg:
“Without additional support from the government, supply of domestically produced milk and other livestock products will eventually become unavailable to consumers,” Nobuhiro Suzuki, the chairman of the ministry’s livestock panel, told reporters…
This view is supported by groups representing farmers:
“An increasing number of livestock farmers are abandoning their business because feed and other costs have exceeded their incomes,” said Masataka Ishiguro, vice secretary general at National Confederation of Farmers Movements, representing over 40,000 farmers in Japan.
This confederation is NOUMINREN, also sometimes referred to as Japan Family Farmers Movement.
As the cost of feed continues to rise, the family farmers represented by NOUMINREN can either give up on farming altogether or move away from livestock and towards more sustainable produce, such as rice, fruit or vegetables. However, even if they wanted to diversify, there are signs that the Japanese government is not keen on supporting small-scale farmers any longer.
It’s been a month since I wrote Part 5 – Consequences for Japan. The following is a round-up of some of the recent stories here, coupled with some of my thoughts.
The rising food prices in Japan are continuing to make themselves felt with pasta and vinegar the latest concerns. The Japan Times/Kyodo News reported on Wednesday that:
Starting Sept. 1, Mizkan Group Corp. said it will raise the price of 37 consumer-use vinegar products by 8 percent to 10 percent… because of rising crop prices. It will be the company’s first price hikes in 18 years.
90% of Japanese are now thinking of saving money when they shop, and there are reports of troubles in the restaurant industry. The most famous such establishment in Osaka, Osaka Meibutsu Kuidaore, is due to shut down in July, partly due to falling sales.
The World Food Program have declared that the food crisis is a “silent tsunami” sweeping the world which, like a large natural disaster, requires a global response. Tsunami is a Japanese word meaning harbour wave. Could this disaster-prone country be seriously affected by the crisis?
In a recent survey, over 40% of people in Japan viewed rising food prices as a concern. As Kyodo News reports:
(This) represented three-fold increases from a survey in January 2007 and marked record highs since this question was first asked in 1998…
It would appear that they are right to be worried. The price rises are hitting the poor in Japan hard. For widow-headed households, average expenditure is now higher than income. Is the recent rationing of rice in the United States and the United Kingdom just the tip of the iceberg for developed countries?
In Part 4 I looked at global agriculture, but in this post I will cover the likely consequences of peak food for Japan.
As rice prices continue to surge, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) have been calling for a summit to discuss the crisis in the world food situation.
Groups such as Canada’s National Farming Union (NFU) are commenting that it is becoming clear that the whole fabric of food production needs to change. Darrin Qualman, NFU’s research director, was interviewed by Inter Press Service (IPS):
“The food production system is designed to generate profits, not produce food or nutrition for people,” Qualman told IPS.
He says there are enormous amounts of food stored in central Canada’s farming heartland, but thousands of people there, including some farm families, are forced to rely on food banks. Continue Reading »
The worldwide price rises in food are beginning to have a serious effect in Japan. Last year the government raised the price at which it sells imported wheat to millers for the first time since 1983. In November, the country was forced to use emergency funds to support noodle-makers, bakers and breweries.
Now butter is running out due to the price of animal feed increasing. The government is again raising wholesale wheat prices this month, this time by about 30%. This will further inflate the price of what little butter is available. The prices of soy beans and cooking oil have also surged, leading some restaurants to buy in bulk.
