protectionism costs Japanese
> consumers, overwhelmingly city dwellers, about
$60 billion in extra > food costs. Digging deeper, Japanese taxpayers
pay an additional $30 billion in government subsidies to farmers.<<
The reason I raised the example of Japan is the fact that it is indeed a real world example of the development model going somewhere--that is why it's the darling of the World Bank (but not the IMF). And that model crucially included the countryside and agriculture--in fact, this was the part of Japan that came under the most change, since before the war, Japanese urbanites were used to living in crowded conditions and working in factories. Also, a lot of the development might have been encouraged by the national government, but giving credit where credit is due, it also took place in the rural areas because of business and banking cooperatives. There were even cooperatives for bringing electrification and telephones out into the countryside. Finally, urbanites make terrible mass consumers. No Walmart for them. They have limited space to store things, so they tend to pick only the finest. It's the people in the countryside who led much of the consumer boom of the 1960s in Japan, and it is still they who have some of the more materially lavish lifestyles. Oh, and yes, as Yoshie's posted article says, many of the farmers are older, but I don't know too many who fit the profile of being potentially unemployed or unemployable. The ones I know work fulltime during the week and farm part-time in the evenings and weekends, and holiday time is often spent on the paddies and fields, too.
I disagree with the neoliberal, Dept. of Agriculture (pro US Agrobusiness) statistics here. First of all, Japanese consumers, even when presented with cheaper imports, often go for taste and appearance, so it actually becomes a cost of preferential trade with the US for supermarket chains to carry US products that don't sell well. They often did this in the late 80s and early 90s, though not so much anymore. More often the imported rot makes it into the food chain through restaurants. Also, look at what Japanese consumers and French consumers pay for food every month as a % of monthly budgets and or income, and you see that the French pay as much or more (always iffy given the yen exchange rate that bounces around like mad). That's incredible when you consider the agricultural surplus the French produce (but then consider among OECD countries no one imports more food than the Japanese). Japanese, like the French, buy small quantities at least several times a week and buy fresh food. Canned goods are unpopular, and frozen ones only slightly more popular. There has been considerable movement, though, toward already prepared meals, and eating has long been popular.
Charles J
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