Report on 51st Congress of the IFAJ – Japan 2007
by Neil Inall

In the hillsides, the valleys and even the middle of major towns there were small plots of rice turning yellow on northern Honshu, Japan’s biggest island. ‘It’s been like that every September for over 3000 years’ was the message for delegates of the 51st IFAJ Congress - most of whom had never seen rice growing before. Some rice was being cut green by the latest whiz-bang machines to be dried artificially. But much was still cut by hand with a sickle and gathered into sheaves to be sun dried on racks. Better taste, they said. Even though officially rice consumption is falling it’s still a major part of the diet in Japan, 3 times a day.

There were 187 delegates from 26 countries at the 51st Congress of the IFAJ (International Federation of Agricultural Journalists). It was the first in Asia. The majority of delegates were from Scandinavia…we 7 from Australia were the only ones from the southern hemisphere.

FEATURES

• There was no talk at the Congress about a free trade agreement with Australia. Zilch. Already Japanese farmers have demonstrated against the idea. And while we’d like them to buy more of everything they’re equally keen for us to buy more from their diminishing farmlands. It’s official policy to sell food more overseas. The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries claims there is a worldwide boom in Japanese foodstuffs caused mainly by the increase in wealth in Asian countries.
• It says there’s been a billion yen increase in exports in the past 4 years mainly in salmon, mackerel, dried sea cucumber, Alaskan pollack, green tea, Chinese yams and rice!
• Everything about Japanese agriculture is diminishing except the average age of farmers…the number of commercial farms and farmers, the area of cultivated land, fewer and fewer young people willing to enter farming and a decreasing ability of the country to feed itself.

The President of the IFAJ conference from the national broadcaster NHK, Hiroki Ose said we’d arrived in Japan when there was a “turning point in its agriculture…when farmers are really pressed with the volume and value of their produce down. Self sufficiency in food supplies (on a calorie basis) was down to 39 percent.”

The Government’s aim is to lift self-sufficiency by 2015. A wonderful aim but a pipe dream in my view.

There’s a similar problem in much of Europe and Scandinavia. But like Europe, Japan’s bureaucrats have plans to tackle rural decline whereas most Australian lawmakers would not know what you were talking about.

I could not help thinking about Australian Agriculture in the 60s and 70s when the then Bureau of Agricultural Economics highlighted the meagre incomes of small farmers in Australia and the ABC radio ran a series of radio programmes called ‘Small farmers in trouble’. Then the Federal Government introduced its farm reconstruction schemes and hundreds took the financial offer and left. Japan needs to do something similar and I said so in the official video of the conference. But I don’t think that adjustment there will so easy when there is so much history and culture and the agricultural co-operative movement nokyo is so strong politically and socially.

* There was a formal meeting of the IFAJ during which the constitution was changed with..as far as I could see… minimal impact on Australians. More detail in my formal report.

Next year’s conference is in Austria and neighbouring Slovenia and is entitled from the mountains to the sea. It’ll be followed by Texas in 2009 and Belgium in 2010. From my experience they are friendly, fun events where you can learn a lot. Japan will stick in my mind because the meals there helped me to lose weight. You do not see many over-fat people there. No wonder they live so long and have fewer heart attacks. Incidentally you can generally eat more cheaply there than in Australia…maybe fill up is more accurate.

I am very grateful for the assistance the NSW Farm Writer’s Association gave me to attend this conference. Japan is an intriguing country, which buys some ten percent of its farm imports (mainly beef) from Australia and no doubt many millions of dollars worth of our minerals.

One thing I won’t forget is the beautifully presented pears in the gourmet food section of the ISETAN department store in Shinjuku a suburb of Tokyo. If you had any concerns about where the pear came from all you had to do was put the number on the pear’s tag into your mobile phone and up would pop a photo of the farmer and his wife who’d grown the fruit with details of their farming operation. Now that is taking traceability to the limits!!

November 2007