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As Japan debates the difficult question of dispatching soldiers to Iraq, I

want to raise a very different aspect of the Japanese role in global

affairs: agricultural issues in the Doha round of WTO trade negotiations.

The two may appear unrelated, but in reality there is a strong linkage, and

agriculture may be the more important.

The Doha round is addressing the issue of trade and economic

development. Poor developing countries need to expand exports to support

their economic development. Economic evidence strongly supports the positive

role of trade in fostering development and industrialization. At the present

time, the United States, Japan and Europe all have relatively low tariffs on

average. But those barriers that we still have often apply to products

coming from developing countries, putting those countries at a disadvantage.

This problem is especially true of agriculture. At the Cancun meeting of the

WTO, however, the Japanese government played an obstructionist role in the

attempt to resolve these issues.

How does this relate to security issues? Poverty provides a breeding

ground for war and terrorism. Recruits to Al Qaeda and other terrorist

groups come mostly from impoverished societies. American policy in the war

on terrorism has focused on apprehending terrorists and toppling the regimes

in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, if we really want to win the war on

terrorism we need to eliminate the root causes of terrorism. Those causes

are complex, but certainly poverty is one central element.

Japan could make a major contribution in this area. Unlike the possible

dispatch of military forces to Iraq, there is no constitutional constraint

on being more of a leader in opening agricultural markets. I have long felt

that Japanese society has been overly focused on the question of

participation in military action and not focused enough on alternative ways

to contribute to global security and development. Rather than being a leader

in opening markets to the benefit of developing countries, however, Japan

has been a laggard among developed nations.

Agricultural import barriers and subsidies to farmers have been a

problem in the United States, Japan and Europe. We all must share the blame.

However, the U.S. government has taken the lead in offering cuts in barriers

and subsidies. Prior to the just-completed Cancun meeting of the WTO, the

U.S. government got the Europeans to agree to a basic framework that should

provide a starting point for hammering out a compromise solution on

agriculture with the developing world. Where was Japan? Why cannot Japan be

the leader, pushing the United States and Europe rather than the other way

around?

The answer supposedly lies in a number of arguments against agricultural

liberalization that have been used in Japan. All of these arguments are

wrong.

One is the need to preserve domestic production for the sake of food

security. Nonsense. The reality is that we live in an interdependent world,

relying on imports for energy, agriculture and manufactured goods. Our lives

depend as much on those manufactured goods and energy as they do on

agriculture. Japan already imports a significant portion of domestic food

needs, so an increase will not make much difference in "security." Besides,

security comes in many forms, including stockpiles, long-term contracts,

diversification of sources of supply and other measures.

Another argument has been culture. Rice, I have been told countless

times, is so central to Japanese culture that the rest of the world must

understand that substantial imports are impossible. Nonsense. All societies

were agriculturally based until a hundred years ago, and we all have the

same sentimental attachment to farming. Beef and the Western cowboy are as

central to the American self-image as rice is in Japan. But we have all been

moving rapidly away from these historical roots. The reality in Japan is

that rice is not central to society any more, and is rapidly fading further.

The time has come for all of us to abandon our national cultural

mythologies, at least to the extent that they affect trade policy, and that

need is greatest in Japan.

Finally, some argue that agriculture is essential to preserving the

environment. Nonsense. Agriculture can be quite destructive to the

environment, and perhaps especially so in Japan. Japanese farmers use almost

20 times more pesticides per hectare and 4 times as much fertilizer as do

American farmers. Pesticides and fertilizer have a bad habit of polluting

surrounding air and water, harming the health of humans and wildlife.

Japanese farmers and their political supports have bamboozled the public

for many years with these sorts of specious arguments concerning

agriculture. In the past, those of use arguing for liberalization usually

focused on the high cost to Japanese consumers of these protectionist

policies. But the war on terrorism adds a new urgency to the issue. The time

has come for the public and the government to break out of the narrow-minded

beliefs of the past and recognize that Japan can play a major role in global

security even without sending soldiers to Iraq