Posted on 11/11/2010 11:12:44 PM PST by Palter
Atsushi Kono considers it the gravest threat to his familys farm in a century of rice-growing: a free-trade initiative that could dismantle Japans sky-high protective farming tariffs, finally opening up the country to cheap, foreign produce.
In a move pitting Japanese farmers against the nations export industries, Prime Minister Naoto Kan is pushing to join negotiations for an American-backed free-trade zone called the Trans-Pacific Partnership that would span the Pacific Rim. The new zone would give Japanese exporters of cars, televisions and other manufactured goods greater access to the United States and other markets.
Free trade is high on the agenda of the back-to-back summit meetings of the Group of 20 and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum this week in South Korea and Japan, attended by leaders including President Obama and Mr. Kan.
Japan is determined to more actively open up to the world, Mr. Kan told world leaders gathered at the G-20 meeting in Seoul, South Korea, on Thursday. Meanwhile, Pacific Rim trade ministers gathering in Yokohama, Japan, vowed to take concrete steps to create a vast free-trade area that would involve over half of the worlds economic output.
But Japans politically powerful agriculture industry is not cheering. A trade agreement could dismantle the generous protections that have sustained Japanese farms for years most notably, Japans 777.7 percent tariff on imported rice.
The Agricultural Ministry warns that if Japan were to join the proposed trade zone, 90 percent of the nations rice cultivation would disappear, and wheat, sugar, dairy and beef output would also be adversely affected costing the country about 4 trillion yen, or $49 billion, in lost production and 3.4 million lost jobs.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
He was off on the price. It’s about 1500 for a five kilo sack. That’s the standard table stuff. There are many more expensive specialty brands that go all the way up. They’d be wasted on me though. Rice tastes like rice.
That would bring it to $4.25/pound, I think.
Two or three times what I pay for Basmati rice.
I Thought that the reason Japanese people eat home grown rice is because it tastes better? They buy what they prefer.
At least that was the reason put forward for the tariff 25 years ago.
That’s about the size of it.
But there are other factors involved as well. One thing that strikes visiting Americans as strange in Japan is how overstaffed a lot of places are. An American convenience store might have one person on duty on the graveyard shift, while a Japanese convenience store will have two or three.
You can look all over Tokyo and never find a self-service gas station. I’ve heard some exist out in the countryside where the population density is very low, but I have never seen one. All stations are full service, they still wash windows, check oil, and even line up to bow you out of the gas station.
All that extra staff obviously means higher prices for the stuff you buy, but the Japanese public just shrugs it off as the price of keeping unemployment low.
Food prices work the same way. Japanese love their farm produce, but they instinctively support Japanese farmers whom they consider family because, well, they are. Everyone has some farmer blood in their family history, and many of them have relatives who still farm the old fashioned way.
I can’t totally explain it myself. But there it is...
It's been ten years so my memory is foggy but that sticky rice even though over priced as far as I'm concerned is still the best in the world. But having said that they need to open their market up....
My free trade instincts agree with you, but even if they do, I don’t think people are going to get the reaction they expect.
Like I said, imported products in Japan are generally cheaper than their Japanese counterparts already — but the Japanese still buy the domestic stuff.
Personally, I’d like to get some non-sticky long grain rice sometimes because there are other recipes where it is just better than the Japanese stuff. Maybe I will be able to find it in the future.
Hehehe!!!
I use my rice cooker for a lot of stuff.
Just tonight, I made some nice chili-beans. Soak the red kidneys for four hours, throw them in the rice cooker with some nice spices, hit the switch and forget it.
Fry up the meat separate, add the extra this and that, combine in the rice cooker and let slow cook for an hour or so. Great stuff!
My Japanese spouse was horrified the first few times she was me pervert the sacred rice cooker, but she is numb to it now.
wow ! What a good idea.
Asian cooks will just have to tolerate weaternization. Like our maid, Masako could never understand all the stuff my mom put in “Japanese fried rice.”
I wonder where Masako is today...
Indeed!
If you look around online you will be amazed at all the different recipes out there you can use with your rice cooker. You can even bake bread and cakes in the thing!
Turn it on “heat” instead of “cook” and it makes a tolerable slow cooker for stews and soups. If you are having a party and want to serve nachos, you can melt the cheese separately (that’s tricky for me) and then put it in the rice cooker to keep hot and molten throughout the party or football game.
Lots of stuff.
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