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Tuesday morning headlines: Food producers moving into China, TV sales and the Aso Cabinet

The Nikkei’s Tuesday morning edition is reporting more moves by Japanese food producers into the Chinese market. First, Maruha Nichiro intends to begin farming trout in the Philippines later this year and shipping the fish live to China. The firm is hoping for sales of around 1 billion yen within a few years. On the beer front, Kirin is now selling its brew to watering holes in Shanghai, and is hoping to sell 150,000 cases of 12 500ml bottles this year. Finally, House Foods and Ichibanya aim to increase the number of their joint-owned curry shops in China from the current 13 to to 41 by the end of March 2012. Read more

Japan’s government to send unemployed to work the farm?

A recent AFP piece started with this:

Japan is planning to offer jobless people work in farming and fishing in hopes of bringing new blood to the ageing countryside amid a worsening recession.

It already sounds rather ayashii. Just what does the government have up its sleeve? Rather than devoting money towards training workers in the latest technology, it intends to pay for 800 people to go on “10-day trips to learn how to process and sell agricultural produce.”

AFP then tells us a bit more:

In the financial year starting in April, the programme will be expanded to offer year-long stays in farming and fishing villages to about 50 people.

I still wasn’t sure about what the point of this program was, but suddenly it became clear:

The programme “is aimed at recruiting potential successors for the agricultural and fisheries industries”, [agriculture ministry official Hisao Muneta] said. “Some participants in the programme will hopefully settle permanently in villages.”

In other words, no one wants to work in agriculture, unless the alternative is being homeless.

Muneta went on to say, “Even a small thing such as showing how to post a blog on the Internet would be great help to ageing farmers and fishermen in promoting their products.”

Sure, whatever.

Japan Economy News on Radio Australia

I was interviewed for a piece on Japanese agricultural policy on Radio Australia. Playlist and mp3s are available here - the interview is in the second half of the 29 August program.

Also appearing is Tobias Harris from the excellent Observing Japan.

Japan’s food self-sufficiency to 40%; Marubeni to source soybeans and corn directly from the US

In last night’s post on Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda’s new cabinet, Japan’s food self-sufficiency rates merited a brief mention at the end:

[N]ew agriculture minister Seiichi Ota also spoke to reporters on Monday, saying that Japan needs to achieve a level of food security. Can Ota put policies in place to help Japan boost its current 39% self-sufficiency rate on a calorie basis.

This morning, Kyodo reported that Japan’s food self-sufficiency rate had risen one percentage point to 40% in fiscal 2007. This was the first rise seen in 13 years. Former Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Masatoshi Wakabayashi had set a goal of reaching 50% food self-sufficiency by 2015. New Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Seiichi Ota told reporters, “We will make efforts both on the production and consumption sides to ensure this trend.” Read more

Amidst rising prices, might foodcrime be the next trend?

After all the hoopla surrounding food safety and labeling in Japan over the past year, and the subsequent hand-wringing over higher prices, especially of dairy products and grains, it seems just about time for a new trend to come in: Foodcrime.

To set up some background, first we need to keep in mind that wholesale wheat prices have nearly doubled in Japan in the past year. According to data released by the Bank of Japan yesterday, the rising price of wheat and wheat flour imports continue to contribute to Japan’s rising wholesale prices. Products such as noodles and spaghetti, which are made from wheat, have seen consumer price increases over 10% over the past months.

Japan is certainly not slowing down in its importation of wheat. According to figures released by the USDA this morning, the size of Japan’s wheat purchase from the US increased to 84,200 metric tons last month, ranking third behind Nigeria and Chile. This accounts for just over 13% of the wheat exported by the US in that time (on a side note, Japan purchased 33.6% of the corn that the US put up for export sale, though Japan did buy less corn than South Korea).

On the domestic front, a 30% price hike has been approved for wheat sales for the 2009 crop.

back to the story: this morning, the Mainichi reported that 2 tons of flour had been stolen from a wholesale company’s warehouse in Saitama. Although we’re not told if this was wheat flour, or whether it was imported or domestic in origin (which would be more likely), we do know that the flour was valued at 270,000 yen and that it was stolen with the firm’s own truck, which was returned to the warehouse, showing an increase of only 8 kilometers on its odometer.

This is hardly the first time food has been stolen in Japan, but we’re forced to wonder if the current environment of rising prices mixed with the guaranteed rise of prices for next year’s crop won’t lead to an increase in such incidents. If nothing else, more cases of mislabeled food should be expected.

200,000 of Japan’s fishing vessels to strike for public awareness of increased fuel costs on July 15

According to yesterday’s Asahi Shimbun, Japan’s National Federation of Fisheries Cooperatives is planning a one-day shutdown of fishing operations on July 15. The paper reports that 16 fishing groups with a total of 200,000 vessels will stay in port on that day in order to raise public awareness of the difficulties faced by the fisheries industry in the current economic climate. The group claims that the current price of 95,300 yen per kiloliter is 2.4 times greater than it was four years ago.

In the article, Kuniyuki Miyahara, who runs the National Foundation of Fisheries Cooperatives, says that the spike in fuel prices has caused the nation’s fishing groups to exhaust all means of holding down costs by themselves. He would like for the government to start subsidizing fuel costs for fishing vessels.

Will this really raise public opinion? Last month we saw a one-day stoppage of 3,000 squid fishing vessels. Prices briefly shot up 30% and then returned to normal. The public simply ignored squid for a few days. Is a one-day stoppage of fishing vessels going to do anything to make the public call for subsidized fuel for fishing vessels?

If the action fails to help raise awareness, Mr Miyahara told the Asahi that spending a second day in port is not out of the question.

Japan to commence emergency butter imports from October

A post discussing Japan’s recent importation of whale meat from Iceland published back on June 4 ended with the line, “Seriously, we could use some butter.”

The Ministry of Agriculture has listened. Today’s Nikkei is reporting that Japan will import about 5000 tons of butter this autumn, from Europe and other yet unspecified markets. The plan is to get the butter into Japan sometime around October, when it is believed that shortages will be the most acute.

In case you’re worried over whether The Ministry of Agriculture will allow the butter to be imported under a free market, fear not: the Agriculture and Livestock Industries Corporation, an entity controlled by the ministry itself, will be handling the import shipments.

Japan imports whale meat from Norway and Iceland for first time in 18 years

For the first time since 1990, Japan has imported whale meat, according to today’s Japan Times and other sources. Apparently, 80 tons of fin whale caught in 2006 by Iceland arrived in Japan in May, and five tons of minke whale caught by Norway have been shipped to Japan so far this year.

The imports have hardly gone unnoticed, however, as the US State Department is urging Iceland and Norway to stop the export of whale meat. The International Whaling Commission will be holding its annual conference in China later this month, and we again expect to see a full-on soap opera of ego, activism and nationalism mixed in a broth of greed, PR and spin. Sort of like a pre-Olympic primer.

However, the importation of whale meat raises several questions: Have western protests over Japanese whaling led to increased domestic demand? Is the government importing meat to pass off to hospitals and schools? Have the decreased sizes of Japan’s “research” catches in recent years led to shortages of whale meat on supermarket shelves? And finally, getting to food we need: Do Norway and Iceland have any butter to send over?

Seriously, we could use some butter.

Global Voices Online looks at the butter shortage

Hanako Tokita over at Global Voices has posted an interesting article entitled Where has all the butter gone? As US retail shops grab headlines by rationing rice to customers, there has been a rash of supermarkets in Japan that simply have no butter left on their shelves. To help give a perspective on the issue, Tokita has translated a blog entry from Bebe Kobo, a site run by a small-scale dairy farmer in Japan.

Where has all the butter gone? at Global Voices Online

Kentucky Fried Chicken to raise prices by 7% across Japan

In line with the price hikes being announced across Japan’s food industries, Kentucky Fried Chicken Japan has announced that it will raise its prices by about 7% from April 24. This will be the first time in 16 years that “Kentucky” has raised its prices, and they will apply to items sold at all of the firms 1,150 shops nationwide. Higher wheat prices are behind the rise, as well as increased costs for corn and soybeans, which are used in chicken feed.

Will we be seeing higher prices at other fast food chains and izakayas? It seems inevitable, given the rise in wheat, meat, dairy and beer prices having already happened or set to kick in over the coming months. Such a situation could certainly be more beneficial to those retailers with deep enough pockets to attract customers with discounts, though we remember what happened when McDonald’s Japan nearly bankrupted itself with this strategy a few years back.

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