From the article of 'Petrel'
No.607 / November 24 , 1996
Please
send us your opinion and the impression about this article without reservation.
Chat in the world food summit
The Japan Communist Party also is performing one of the cast.
The world food summit ended reducing the hunger population of 800,000,000 persons or more by half until 2015.
The rise of grain's price at last year called a noisy discussion to which the world food crisis pounded. 'Though it is thought that several billion persons also will increase of the population by 2050 in the future, whether it will be possible to increase production of the food which eats people like it hereafter is a doubt and if the life level rises, twofold of the population increase and the threefold one food are needed, etc.' This was said even the summit at this time.
It is whispered to an uneasy nature by tying foresight which is that China which has the best population in the world of 1,200,000,000 will become the best food import country in the world in the future to the food crisis.
As many as 136,000,000 tons are becoming to the amount of grain shortage in China in 2010. Therefore, "calculation" not in time even if all of the 100,000,000 tons of the United States grain export are turned there. These make the food crisis the one of seems being further.
The summit sued the relief of "Hunger population" thought for 800,000,000 persons to be going to exist in all over the world now and asked to measures to support to them in the meantime.
However, it was also natural that each interests was intertwined and never became a result that the world intention concentrated on one and a strong joint action was begun because 170 one country is a conference with the region which participates.
Nations of the world were already divided in the starting point of the discussion how to achieve this problem.
There is even of the trade liberalization by the nation which emphasizes as the road of "food security treaty" achievement and above all has the nation which insists that the protection principle is necessary while it is.
There is a nation with a necessary population control too and by opposing that, the food crisis also has a religious person who refutes for the problem to exist even in the "Distribution" in the population increase. In such conditions, their opinions are various in the point.
The reason why the opinion in nations is not corresponding is that a definite, economical interests intervene in here, bourgeois nations persons gather, and an essential limit of the summit which consults (chats) is exposed.
Of course, Japan (including the Japan Communist Party which sends two persons' Diet members of an assembly to this conference. ) stubbornly opposed the opinion that the free trade is benefiting of "food security treaty" and even it is a means of the solution of the food crisis.
On the other hand, having emphasized even for the trade liberalization to solve the food crisis was the United States which was the large export country of the food and Australia, etc. These nations can draw out a big profit from the trade liberalization, that is, the trade liberalization of foods. Their insistences were problems of their economical interests rather than "food security treaty". It was similar to Japan, South Korea and China, etc. whose protectionism is a problem of the economical, political profit.
It is a gray-headed lapwing according to the situation that the trade liberalization is a solution plan to the food crisis. Or, it is depending on the condition. Even if The trade liberalization is done and the importing and exporting of grain is free, the free trade might not be even in what help if in the nation which falls into the food crisis, there is no power by which grain is bought, that is, "purchasing power". If the grain which can be exported is a little, or they export only by extremely high-priced for the bad harvest in the exported side, the free trade is powerless compared with the food crisis. The other side, saying that the protectionism is the opposition plan to the food crisis like Japan do not have other than the dogma. They say simply that As for the food in the world, if Japan increases production and supports oneself the food, there will be room that much and only the amount will be able to ease the food crisis.
However, if commercial agriculture of the world retreats, it means the decline of agriculture in nations which offer a large amount of grain by a low price. The Japanese Communist Party hopes for it. However, why is it a cancellation of the food crisis of the world that the large grain production ground in the United States and Australia, etc. declines? The world about which the Japanese Communist Party thinks is the world where a nation all over the world all works hard at the self-support of the food and supports oneself. However, Why can they say that such blockaded worlds, the self-sufficient world do not exactly deepen and intensify the food crisis further.
In any self-support nation the guarantee of natural calamity's coming, becoming a cruel bad harvest, and not being visited in the food crisis and is no means to secure the food when becoming so. Because, other nations also think only about my country and it is setting up of a self-sufficient system and neither consideration of supplying the food to another country nor the system might also have room again. This might be a nature of "self-sufficiency" system which the Japanese Communist Party recommends.
Exactly, Even such self-sufficient "feudal" systems are systems of a mutual estrangement of the division of the world and isolation and might be intensify hunger in various regions.
In the Edo age, because various clans were mutually the exchange but had been had as closing own the world by hunger of the bad harvest, it became more miserable and more terrific. A large amount of death by hunger will been eased very much if the circulation net of a nationwide commodity exists, various clans are isolated closing the country and is not cut off from other clans absolutely.
Of course, the insistence on the free trade cannot be located closely to interests of United States and other "Agricultural large country". However, it cannot be said that the protectionism is progressive and the insistence on the free trade is reactionary. Worker's problem is to see how they relates to a general tendency of social development at the same time as confirming the class character of the insistence on the protectionism and the free trade, that is, which promotes or obstruct social development. If doing so, Character of the free trade which destroys and is progressive might be clear.
The underdeveloped country in Africa follows to Japan. The reason is to expect help of the rices from Japan. However, Japan does not try to offer putting the rice of "surplus" which Japan keeps for people for whom Africa starved though Japan keeps the rice of a huge surplus or makes of a vast rice field "reducing acreage" (fallow) to the point where the subsidy is paid to the farmer.
At a glance, it has a lot of contradictions. However, a bourgeois nation in Japan cannot escape from such contradiction.
In Japan, the rice are surplus and government is executing the reducing acreage (moreover, it is reinforced this year to the enforcement of the new food method), however Japan imports the rice from 400,000 to 800,000 tons from the foreign country every year. Helping to the foreign country voluntarily importing a large amount of the rice might be a strange action. (This is not a fact though shape is good to the purchase to help the hunger population. Moreover, how is the fact that the rices has already remained in Japan explained even if Japan does not buy it from the foreign country?)
If the import rice is easily offered to Africa, a severe criticism is poured on it by the rice export country. It is restricted international and strongly to grant the commodity grain as help before that.
The reason why a bourgeois nation in Japan is contradicted so much and the blind alley strayed off is that the policy of an agricultural protectionism has already been executed for tens of years when win political support of the petty bourgeois class. As a result, the agriculture of Japan does not pass to the world and this weak agriculture came to need the protectionism more and more. That is, Japan has fallen into the vicious circle.
To what should be laughed, in two persons' members of an assembly of the Japan Communist Party which attended this summit, they made a speech here, the standpoint of a Japanese government was reinforced, and the vociferation set up the protectionism. The joint struggle of the Liberal Democratic Party and the Japanese Communist Party was truly vivid and splendid in the participation nations persons in the world. They did not only make a speech that the raise of the food self-sufficiency of Japan largely contributed only to the cancellation of the food crisis of the world. They emphasized to be necessary even the reinforcement of the family agriculture in that.
In short, Member of an assembly of the Japanese Communist Party exposed the unbecoming and petty bourgeois narrow-mindedness and bleached the shame to the world also in an international scene. Bourgeois in the world in which it had participated in this summit will never have evaluated such parties though mistook for "Communist" either. They only played the role of the appendix of bourgeois Japan which had persisted in an agricultural protectionism at most.