When Japanese pose for pictures, instead of saying “Cheese,” some say “Butter!” These days, butter is more likely cause for frowning, since it is rationing that comes to mind.
Japanese grocery stores are limiting customers to a maximum of two packages of butter each ahead of the Christmas holiday rush.
In recent weeks, Tokyo announced its latest plan for “emergency imports” to ease shortages of the spread.
The shortfall stems from several factors, including stressed-out dairy cows, aging farmers, rising costs and trade and price restrictions.
The official reason for short supplies of milk used to make butter is lower output due to unusually hot weather last summer in the northern island of Hokkaido, Japan’s dairy basket.
Fresh milk sells for more per tonne than butter, so dairy producers are said to be giving butter short shrift, leaving butter sections often bare on shelves crammed with margarines and other spreads.
However, the worsening shortages are also a symptom of industry protections that limit farm imports and of deeply entrenched resistance to a market-opening overhaul.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is likely to struggle to deliver on reform promises even if his party wins a stronger mandate for his “Abenomics” policies in yesterday’s election.
Apart from overworked cows and difficulties growing enough forage to feed them, dairying is among many Japanese agricultural industries in decline. Farmers are retiring without heirs willing to take over their farms and prices for feed and fuel have surged, cutting into profits.
Japan had 417,600 dairy farms in 1963. As of February, it had 18,600, despite heavy government subsidies.
Japanese farmers, like those in the US and many other nations, traditionally have been protected from foreign competition, both to ensure a degree of food self-sufficiency for the resource-scarce island nation and for political reasons.
Despite Abe’s vows to modernize farming and “drill deep” through the nation’s bedrock of bureaucracy and vested interests, his government has made little headway apart from tinkering with land reforms.
Tariffs on imports of farm produce average 23 percent. Overall, the government pays a subsidy to dairy farmers of ¥12.8 (US$0.11) per kilogram for butter and ¥15.41 per kilogram for cheese.
Dairy farmers like Shinjiro Ishibashi, who is raising about 300 head of cattle on his farm in Chiba, east of Tokyo, count on the support.
Japan’s farm lobby remains a stronghold for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which — while talking up sweeping reforms — is also reassuring farmers that it will continue to look after their interests.
“Mr Abe says he will preserve our ‘beautiful Japan,’ and I expect him to do it,” Ishibashi said, alluding to Abe’s constant praise for Japan’s traditional farming lifestyle.
Japan’s farm protection policies are one reason the 12 nations negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact have been unable to reach an agreement.
Negotiators meeting in Washington this week look likely to end another year without a consensus.
Among the nations negotiating the pact, Japan has the second-largest food market after the US, making foreign dairy and other farmers are eager for more access.
However, “sacred territory” issues such as pickup trucks for the US and beef, pork, dairy, sugar and rice in Japan have frustrated efforts to reach an overarching agreement.
A Japanese government study estimated that opening farm markets under the trade pact could reduce domestic farm output by about ¥2.7 trillion, or more than 40 percent of total farm, fisheries and forestry production.
However, a report by the US Department of Agriculture questioned that figure, saying that it does not take into account issues such as supply constraints in other nations. The US report estimated that market liberalization for dairy products could boost Japan’s butter imports by about half, to about ¥6 billion.
Japan’s Agriculture and Livestock Industries Corp, which is overseen by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, buys and sells products online through an open bidding process, to help ensure the stability of prices and supplies, in effect subsidizing loss-making farmers and manufacturers.
The system, meant to ensure stable supplies, appears to be failing to do that, at least for butter.
Japan’s raw milk output in the fiscal year that ended in March was 6.76 million tonnes, down from an industry peak of just over 7.8 million tonnes in 1997. Butter consumption per person has held steady at about 2kg for about a decade, while milk consumption has been falling.
Apart from the emergency imports, four major local dairy companies were ordered to increase butter output for home use by 30 percent earlier this month, reducing drinking milk and cream production, the farm ministry said.
It said it would do everything possible to stabilize supplies, beginning next year.
A victory for Abe yesterday could give him at least two more years, and possibly more, to tackle such issues, said Uri Dadesh, an associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“Whether he will do the structural reforms is a different matter,” Dadesh said in a conference call with reporters. “Let’s remember that this is a man who already has a massive majority of the parliament on his side.”
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