this is an awesome series of posts. it’s too bad these types of ideas can’t break into the mainstream media. and it’s unfortunate that while the japanese recognize some of these problems they do not yet consider the impact of their actions/choices on a global scale. despite japan’s current ‘eco’ mania, a recent opinion survey placed japanese last of those in major cities willing to implement lifestyle changes for environmental reasons.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hqBt5PoJbtmHlxRK9CO5OXdIg9UA

another point worth considering is the global increase in meat production and it’s impact on the food supply. the production of meat uses 30% of the world’s land (not under ice) and 70% of all agricultural land. meat consumption has doubled in the past few decades and will double again by 2050. meat production is a major energy hog (pun intended), a serious drain on global food supplies, and has a direct correlation to recent price increases of commodities. clearly, meat consumption on this scale is not sustainable.

i’ve poached a quote that sums it all up better than I can:
“If price spikes do not change eating habits, perhaps the combination of deforestation, pollution, climate change, starvation, heart disease and animal cruelty will gradually encourage the simple daily act of eating more plants and fewer animals.”

masunoba fukuoka said that the japanese could be self-sufficient if each person were given a 1/4 acre of land to farm. when written 30 years ago this was an extreme idea, as the ideas of visionaries often are, but it seems more and more practical every day.

Thanks for your comments.

As a rule I’m not a cornicopian, but I think Japan’s situation is far more complex than simple self sufficiency stats would suggest.

I completely agree about the complexity of the situation and I hope that what follows clarifies some of my points for you.

…the population is still “only” 125 million and seemingly peaking. This suggests to me that the main problem in Japan would be trends in diet and food production, not the more fundamental and more worrying problem of too many people on too little land.

I think these are two sides of the same coin, which is why in Part 3 I linked the decrease in self-sufficiency to a changing diet and also talked about land being left fallow.

It was certainly not my intention to highlight population increase as the only worrying thing behind Japan’s food situation. However, there has been a decoupling between the population and what the land can support, even on a “traditional” diet. Remember the government food crisis manual I talked about in Part 5.

Rather than talking pure percentages, it might be more appropriate to ask what the productive capacity of the land is, and how quickly agricultural production can be increased. I won’t go into all the figures here, but I think you may find it useful to read Tony’s Food and Energy in Japan, especially pages 59-61, which deals with future scenarios for food production, including increasing arable land per capita. In the best scenario given, Japan can achieve a “survivable, if not comfortable” self-sufficiency rate by 2050, but only if there are no energy/food import crises and the population is allowed to decline…

The main reason that there is less and less agricultural land in production is simply that fields are lying fallow and/or rewilding due to economics. This leaves plenty of scope for increases should the economic situation change.

I’m interested in what you mean by “should the economic situation change”. Over the last 50 years there has been not been a turnaround in agricultural production, whatever the economic climate. I think the situation which might change this might be a halt in food imports to Japan, possibly caused by a world-wide depression.

I talked in Part 5 about what might happen with the breakneck increase in food production which would be needed under such circumstances. The major social upheaval should be enough to worry about.

You also suggest green revolution crops, which as far as I’m aware usually have high fertilizer inputs, something that will be in relatively short supply given a full-scale energy shortage.

If there is anything to worry about, the collapse in local fisheries and rising cost of long-distance fishing may be the one.

I agree that this is another worrying part of Japan’s food situation, something which I have not gone into great detail on. With the strikes by the squid fishermen last week, this might be coming to a head pretty soon.

However, why worry about the cost of long-distance fishing but not the cost of long-distance imports or the cost of transporting food in general? The fuel strikes and protests in Europe have been by both fishermen and truck-drivers.

These areas of food supply will all be seriously affected before Japan can turn its agricultural production around, whilst also having to cope with reduced fossil fuel inputs.

Cheers,
Freddy

Thanks for your interesting articles.

Regarding self sufficiency in Japan, you state that Japanese self-sufficiency was 79% in 1960, which compares favorably to the high thirties where it is now. However, Japanese population was already 94 million in 1960. Even if you accept that there was a higher proportion of children (i.e., small eaters) back then, the population is still “only” 125 million and seemingly peaking. This suggests to me that the main problem in Japan would be trends in diet and food production, not the more fundamental and more worrying problem of too many people on too little land. Since the major population trend has been urbanization, I would doubt much farmland has been lost to residential or retail developments, unlike in the USA say. The main reason that there is less and less agricultural land in production is simply that fields are lying fallow and/or rewilding due to economics. This leaves plenty of scope for increases should the economic situation change. I would imagine that Japan’s rainfall would even allow water hungry high-yielding green revolution crops should they become economical viable for small scale producers and not just corn belt megafarms. If there is anything to worry about, the collapse in local fisheries and rising cost of long-distance fishing may be the one.

As a rule I’m not a cornicopian, but I think Japan’s situation is far more complex than simple self sufficiency stats would suggest.

Tony – With regards to population, I think the main reason we are not hearing anything about it is again due to the dominance of the constant-growth economic system.

This is reliant on more and more people spending more and more money every year, something which is obviously not sustainable. We have Ban Ki-moon calling for a 50% increase in food production by 2030, rather than a decrease in birthrates.
Link: The Times, June 3

The fear that Japan’s population decline will undermine its economic growth led last week to the LDP calling for increased immigration, a whole other can of worms.
Link: The Japan Times, June 13

Population is something I hope to write more about in the future, especially with regards to the framing of the debate. Japan’s current demographics put it in a unique position; that of being the first “developed” country to have to deal seriously with these issues as a matter of long-term survival.

Cheers,
Freddy

Glad to see you got part 6 finished. Yes, it’s hard to write because things seem to be changing every day!

Please note that with all the talk of food, literally no one (especially the UN) is talking about population. This ought to be a good time for the UN to lead the world (because of all the sensitive religious and political issues involved) in a movement to stabilize and slowly reduce population. Why are we not hearing anything about this???

The FAO is a joke; price of y will rise by x% in the next ten years! What do they think they know?? Predictions are basically a waste of time. Trying to elucidate the trends by systemic analysis of situations is much more worthwhile.

For a farming organization, Zen-noh is also a joke. If any of them had been near a farm in the last ten years they would know that there are other fertilizers that farmers can put on their fields. The *problem* is that when chemical fertilizers become scarce the *competition* for these fertilizers will heat up (e.g. leaf mould from woods and forests, mud from rivers…). I’m sure this also happened in North Korea, but it just hasn’t been reported. It’s possible that knowledge and practice of composts is more common in the Japanese countryside than in North Korea, where virtualy ALL traditional and natural farming was eliminated in favour of modern industrial-chemical-mechanical farming. (Zen-noh, of course, has its reasons for not wanting to damage the chemical industry in any way by suggesting that Japanese farmers might try organic farming and so on.)

You’re right about the food export and leasing of farmland overseas. These cannot be relied on. For a start, as we already see, transport is one of the first areas hit by high oil prices…

Thank you for the book advert!

Best wishes,

Tony

Thanks ya’ll