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DUBLIN–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/44cce8/japan_agribusiness) has announced the addition of the “Japan Agribusiness Report Q1 2009″ report to their offering.

Japan Agribusiness service provides proprietary medium term price forecasts for key commodities, including corn, wheat, rice, sugar, cocoa, coffee, soy and milk; in addition to newly-researched competitive intelligence on leading agribusiness producers, traders and suppliers; in-depth analysis of latest industry developments; and essential industry context on Japan’s agribusiness service.

Despite having an advanced level of mechanisation and high yields, Japanese agriculture is largely unprofitable and is able to supply less than 40% of the country’s food needs. In this new Japan Agribusiness Report for Q1 2009, we examine the challenges that the agriculture sector in Japan faces over the coming years.

Between 1960 and 2005 Japan’s food self sufficiency in a calorie basis fell from 73% to 40%. Over the same period, the share of agriculture as a proportion of GDP dropped from 9% to 1% and the area of agricultural land fell from 6.09mn hectares (ha) to 4.60mn ha.

While Japanese agriculture has enjoyed some successes, such as achieving self sufficiency in milk and rice production, farming has never really been profitable without protection from imports and heavy government support in the form of subsidies and price supports. Even production of the key staple rice has fallen over the last two decades as consumption has dropped.

Read the full story at Business Wire

TOKYO — The number of people who entered farming in Japan last year increased 11.4% from a year earlier to 66,820 apparently due to a rise in the number of laid-off workers and retired baby boomers, according to farm ministry data released recently. Among them, the number of people who took over farms from aging relatives increased 15.6% to 57,400, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said.

Read the full story at Japan Today

Data released this week by Japan’s agricultural ministry showed the number of new farmers in the country rose by 11.4% in 2009, the first increase since it started tracking such data in 2006.

That looks like a welcome development for a nation that imports most of its food. Japan has the lowest food self-sufficiency rate among industrialized nations at around 40%, a position that looks even more precarious in an era of rising resource prices and growing competition for supplies.

The Japanese government released a white paper in 2008 calling for increased food self-sufficiency and the freeing-up of unused farmland, and at first glance the rise in new farmers may be a sign that overworked urbanites are leaving the cities in search of a more easygoing lifestyle in the countryside.

But a closer look suggests the rise has more to do with Japan’s demographic decline and stagnant economy than the desire to grow organic vegetables.

Read the full story at The Wall Street Journal

Farming is dependent on the weather. Too little rain can ruin a crop and flooding can destroy fields. Some plants thrive in hot climates and cannot cope with frost, while others are the opposite. Climate is not the same as weather, which is notoriously unpredictable. However the overall weather trends that make climate are changing. Agriculture needs to adapt in order to cope with these changes, and quickly.

Global warming does not just mean everywhere getting gradually hotter, climate is much more complex. Climate change is leading to more rain is some places, less rain in others, storms where previously they were a rarity, hotter summers, and counter-intuitively colder winters.

Agriculture the world over is being affected. While individual countries are experiencing different changes there are some basic changes that need to be made to farming methods worldwide.

Read the full article at Helium

(The G20 Summit, where global policies affecting the lives of everyone, including small women and men farmers in Asia, are being discussed, from the eyes of those who are protesting against it. — Admin)

To your left is an anarchist, to your right a cop in riot gear, and just yards away is a burning police car – it’s chaos. The G20 is holding its annual summit this weekend in Toronto and has certainly sparked an outcry. Rallies have been occurring throughout Canada’s largest city all week, reaching a pinnacle on Saturday with a protest ending in violence. The infamous Black Bloc, who were responsible for most of the violence last year in Pittsburg, along with other protesters surged through downtown throwing bricks through windows and clashing with police.

The Black Bloc paint a dark picture of activism, but most of the protesters actually remained peaceful. Unfortunately though, their messages got lost in the confusion. Here’s an explanation of the real issues, and why the summit has made everyone so upset.

Read the full article at The Faster Times

(An opinion piece arguing for the retention of Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which is of particular interest to farmers organizations in Asia who are proposing their own common agricultural policy in the ASEAN. — Admin)

1. The CAP is a symbol of the European integration. Agricultural policy must remain Common and should by no means be renationalised.
2. The CAP has a clear added value and a major role to play in the EU 2020 strategy towards tackling the economic, social and environmental challenges that Europe is facing.
A strong European agricultural sector is needed in order to guarantee food security, safety and quality at an affordable price for our citizens.
There is a global increase in food demand against a background of higher production costs, severe volatility in agricultural markets, adverse climate conditions (e.g. the southern EU member states are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change). A strong CAP is fundamental for the preservation and economic development of the EU rural areas against the threat of land abandonment and rural depopulation. European agriculture is an important source of employment and prosperity and contributes to environmental sustainability.

Read the full article at New Europe

Taipei, June 8 (CNA) More Taiwanese want to be farmers than own mansions, according to a survey by a local business weekly.

“That tells me people value a spiritual life, and want to sustain a life on their own, ” said Liou Wei-gong, an associate professor of sociology at Soochow University in Taipei.

The survey, published in Business Today’s May 24 issue, found that of 1,183 respondents over 21 years old, 5.1 percent said they dreamt of being farmers, while only 2.5 percent dreamt of owning a mansion.

Read the full story at Taiwan News

My neighbors are farmers. They regularly bring us cabbages, cucumbers, bitter melon, tomatoes, eggplants, persimmons, and other local specialties, and their arrival on our doorstep with a box of fresh-picked produce is as much an announcement of the changing seasons as the color of the sky or warmth of the wind. Our conversations often turn to rain, mulch, tools for tilling, and fruit yields from the old but still-productive trees they tend. They offer advice on reviving my stunted tomatoes, and we debate the relative merits of baseball caps for working the fields under the hot sun as opposed to the traditional straw kasa. None of this would be remarkable except that we live in the middle of Yokohama, a progressive city of 3.6 million people, and our houses are so densely packed that they almost touch. My neighbors are Japanese urban farmers, and have been for decades.

Read the full story

AFA and PAKISAMA supports the campaign of the residents of the town of Casiguran in Quezon province, Philippines (mostly farmers, fishers, and indigenous peoples) who will be displaced by the creation of a special economic zone in the area.

The Sentro ng Alternatibong Lingap Panligal (SALIGAN), together with the Task Force Anti-APECO, held the first of a series of fora on “Addressing the APECO” in Quezon City, Philippines last June 4, 2010.

The activity convened multi-sectoral partners in support of affected residents of Casiguran, Aurora, largely comprised of farmers, fisher folk and indigenous peoples, who will be displaced by the passage of RA 10083 or the Aurora Pacific Economic Zone (APECO) law.
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Cambodia’s government, with the help of international lenders and foreign investors, is funneling investment into the country’s vast rural areas. Although the development projects are welcome in this impoverished country, there are worries that they also set the stage for the displacement of the poor. Here’s our report from Cambodia’s Kampong Thom province.

Cambodia’s economy relies on garment exports, tourism and construction. Rural areas are largely untapped.

“So the government needs to work hard to diversify its export commodities, export products, add more value by processing more, let’s say agriculture production in the country and thereby create more jobs to help the economy grow faster,” said Puto Kamayana.

Read more at VOA