50 desperate housewives bring down a government

Japan's rice policy is changed forever


By Zhen Ming


LET'S pretend I'm a time traveller today. People power can bring down governments, folks. I've seen this via my time machine.

Kimonos are all aflutter on a beach in Uozu, a small Japanese fishing port, as 50 fishermen's wives gather to protest in July.

They are upset that food prices have doubled. Stop rice speculation, they tell the local town master. It's downright profiteering. Rice is life to the Japanese.

The news spreads and 12 days later, 600 women in a neighbouring town start a similar petition. One group lose their cool and attack a rice merchant's warehouse.

'Attack of the Hungry Housewives', 'Taisho Rice Riot', scream the headlines. Copycat assaults on rice merchants and others spread to larger towns.

My time machine fast forwards to 12 Aug, and I stare at the burnt-out remains of the landmark Suzuki Store in Kobe.

The next thing you know, troops hit the streets to quell a whopping 700,000 angry protesters. No soldiers die but more than 30 civilians are killed. The summer of discontent lasts three months and ends only after the government of the day resigns.

Am I staring into a make-believe future? No, all this happened exactly 90 years ago.

Uozu housewives changed the way rice is grown and traded in Japan. And, in subsequent years, they also affected rice politics and rice business in Asia.

Responding to numerous petitions for self-sufficiency in food supply or state regulation of rice prices, a new Japanese government stepped in after the riots to control the distribution of rice.
This unfortunately had serious long-term consequences.

Lamented food policy commentator Yamashita Kazuhito, a senior fellow at Japan's Research Institute of Economy, Trade & Industry (Rieti): 'Consumers started the Taisho rice riot in 1918. And it was consumers who had to stave off hunger during the postwar period by gradually and painfully selling off their belongings for food.'

He added: 'The current policy, under which the government restricts food supply, keeps high prices, and shifts the burden onto consumers, is contradictory to the true idea of food security.'

So here's the truth for you: For years, instead of lowering prices, a prospering Japan has mollycoddled rice, artificially maintaining high prices by means of high tariffs on imports.

At the same time, however, Japan has imported wheat and corn in huge volumes, becoming the world's largest importer of agricultural products. And guess what? High retail prices of rice led to the gradual decline in Japanese rice consumption.

Self-sufficiency falls

This rice policy is blamed for putting Japan's agriculture in hot water - with its food self-sufficiency ratio falling from 79 per cent in 1960 to the current 39 per cent.

Tokyo is now said to be left with only 4.6 million ha of farmland which, if used for planting only potatoes and rice (to max out the possible number of calories), would barely be enough to keep the Japanese population alive.

So spare a thought for rice policies, while you tuck into your chicken rice.Though rice prices have recently stabilised somewhat, they are still higher than before, as supply and demand continue to go in opposite directions.

Over the past few years, global grain harvests have consistently fallen short of consumption, reducing carryover stocks - our only buffer against unanticipated crop failure - to their lowest levels since the 1980s.

The bad news: A total of 37 countries are now confronted by a crisis in food costs, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation. At the last count, rice riots have broken out in two dozen of them.

Look at the recent long lines to buy government-subsidised rice in the Philippines.

Well, guess what? A stop-gap solution has been made possible, ironically, by a quirky World Trade Organisation rule that obliges Tokyo to buy high-grade American rice it does not need. This is good rice that eventually turns bad over time and becomes feed - fit only for Japanese hogs and chicken.

When re-exported with US permission, this good rice will soon be more than enough to feed the entire Philippines for the next 18 months.

It could also send rice prices plummeting in the coming weeks. It's a relief that's on the way - with Tokyo already preparing to ship an initial 200,000 tons to Manila.

Bit more good news for you: A good harvest awaits much of Asia. Chew on that, folks.


Source: The New Paper, Thu 21 Aug 2008