Japan’s Hunger Becomes a Dire Warning for Other Nations
Mariko Watanabe admits she could have chosen a better time to take up baking. This week, when the Tokyo housewife visited her local Ito-Yokado supermarket to buy butter to make a cake, she found the shelves bare.
“I went to another supermarket, and then another, and there was no butter at those either. Everywhere I went there were notices saying Japan has run out of butter. I couldn’t believe it - this is the first time in my life I’ve wanted to try baking cakes and I can’t get any butter,” said the frustrated cook.
Japan’s acute butter shortage, which has confounded bakeries, restaurants and now families across the country, is the latest unforeseen result of the global agricultural commodities crisis.
A sharp increase in the cost of imported cattle feed and a decline in milk imports, both of which are typically provided in large part by Australia, have prevented dairy farmers from keeping pace with demand.
While soaring food prices have triggered rioting among the starving millions of the third world, in wealthy Japan they have forced a pampered population to contemplate the shocking possibility of a long-term - perhaps permanent - reduction in the quality and quantity of its food.
A 130% rise in the global cost of wheat in the past year, caused partly by surging demand from China and India and a huge injection of speculative funds into wheat futures, has forced the Government to hit flour millers with three rounds of stiff mark-ups. The latest - a 30% increase this month - has given rise to speculation that Japan, which relies on imports for 90% of its annual wheat consumption, is no longer on the brink of a food crisis, but has fallen off the cliff.
According to one government poll, 80% of Japanese are frightened about what the future holds for their food supply.
Last week, as the prices of wheat and barley continued their relentless climb, the Japanese Government discovered it had exhausted its ¥230 billion ($A2.37 billion) budget for the grains with two months remaining. It was forced to call on an emergency ¥55 billion reserve to ensure it could continue feeding the nation.
“This was the first time the Government has had to take such drastic action since the war,” said Akio Shibata, an expert on food imports, who warned the Agriculture Ministry two years ago that Japan would have to cut back drastically on its sophisticated diet if it did not become more self-sufficient.
In the wake of the decision this week by Kazakhstan, the world’s fifth biggest wheat exporter, to join Russia, Ukraine and Argentina in stopping exports to satisfy domestic demand, the situation in Japan is expected to worsen.
Bakeries, forced to increase prices by up to 30% in the past year, are warning that the trend will continue. Manufacturers of miso, a culinary staple, are preparing to pass on the bump in costs caused by the rising price of soybeans and cooking oil. And the nation’s largest brewer, Kirin, is lifting beer prices for the first time in almost two decades to account for the soaring cost of barley.
“In the past, Japan was a rich country with a powerful yen that could easily buy cheap imports such as wheat, corn and soybeans,” said Mr Shibata, who directs the Marubeni Research Institute in Tokyo. “But with enormous competition from the booming Chinese and Indian economies, that’s changed forever. You also need to take into account recent developments, including the damage to crops caused by drought and other disasters in exporting countries like Australia,” where the value of wheat exports has tumbled from $3.49 billion to $2.77 billion in the past three years.
The situation has been compounded by a surge in demand for bio-fuels such as ethanol, made from maize, encouraging farmers around the world to divert their efforts away from wheat and barley and into maize, further driving up prices.
Arguably Japan’s biggest concern, however, is its weakening ability to sustain its population with domestic produce. In 2006 the country’s self-sufficiency rate fell to 39%, according to the Agriculture Ministry. It was only the second time since the ministry began keeping records in 1960 that the population derived less than 40% of its daily calorie intake from domestically grown food.
Shinichi Shogenji, dean of the University of Tokyo’s graduate school of agricultural and life sciences, said Japan’s meat consumption had increased by 900% since 1955, in part because expanding incomes had enabled families to supplement the sparse national diet of rice, fish and miso soup with more Western-style food.
This trend, combined with rapid ageing and declining rural populations, had placed the country’s self-sufficiency at a perilously low level, Professor Shogenji said.
In view of recent predictions by Goldman Sachs analysts that commodities could experience “explosive rallies” in the next two years, many are wondering if Japan could become an example to other rich nations that have relied too much on foreign supplies to put food on their tables.
© 2008 Fairfax Digital
Japan is one of THE major corporate/ industrial powers.
If they are running short of staples like wheat and butter…
How fare behind is the rest of the world?
‘Running Man’ style food riots anyone?
I walked past a bakery yesterday with a sign on it’s doors saying they had closed due to the high cost of wheat and fuel.
We all had better start ripping up our grass and planting food.
dang. i really like doughnuts. i hope americans can still find a way to be fat.
i hope japan doesn’t storm our shores for our wheat. hopefully they will invade china for its wheat and blow up all those factories turning out bogus products with poisons in them.
There seems to a major disconnect. The Japanese Yen has soared in value against every major currency in the past year. That is to say Japanese purchasing power is much stronger than ever. Seems like hoarding is going on. There’s no reason why a country with a currency on steroids like the Yen should have these kind of problems. This shortage is manufactured and has no basis in reality.
It will be soon enough that all of our realities become more homegenous.
Unless words take on new meanings when you study economics (and I know sometimes they do), then you can understand that if a shortage exists then the shortage has a basis in reality. The existance of a shortage gives it a basis in reality. That’s why the commentator gave the example of someone who could not locate butter. That is a real search for butter. Not having it, or searching for it like that is a shortage. So, then, the shortage is real. So, then, the shortage is based in reality.
That butter shortage is a manufactured problem to scare the general population for political purposes. Grocery stores and bakeries could have easily gotten butter from other sources besides Australia. And why not just stock margarine as well (which you rarely see in a Japanese grocery store)? You can bake cake with margarine, you know.
This story is more about what a fascist/corporatist nightmare Japan is. Its population can be so easily manipulated by simply things like a butter shortage. This country has had the same party in power for 50 years. It’s economy is not a free market - it is planned by the Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry (METI). If METI wants a butter shortage to scare the rabble, it will do so - and it has.
No doubt this story will be played in Japan to scare people into thinking that China’s rising economy has led to a food shortages in Japan in order to further vilify China.
Butter? Cake? Doesn’t MS Watanabe know that with the Cheney/Bush Global War of Terror luxury items like food and fuel are rationed? Those items are only for the filthy rich warlords. We walk, starve, pay taxes and homage - that’s it!
This food shortage is not only real, it’s global. The food riots have already started in third world countries. The starvation for the poor is already too real. This shortage is now starting to impact the rich nations, like Japan. Any nation that cannot sustainably grow enough food to feed its own population is at risk. And that includes the U.S.
The rice shortage has already hit the U.S.. It was reported yesterday that in the northeast, store shelves cannot be reliably stocked with rice. At some Costco stores they are limiting purchases of 20# sacks of rice to one bag per customer. Some are guessing that some Americans are already starting to hoard staples such as rice, flour, and sugar. This seems to indicate that a food panic is beginning even here.
What we are facing is a perfect storm. Climate change, water shortages, peak oil, an imploding economy. What is happening in Japan is just the first glimmer of what is to come. Soon. To a market near you.
Fasten you seatbelt and hold on. And don’t forget to support your local farmers, get to know your neighbors, and plant your own garden. And learn to share.
The beginning of the end, folks, and our leaders are not even paying attention. They just talk and form committees. But I bet they have a personal exit plan.
the current shortages are due mainly to new speculation in the commodities markets, caused by the flight of money from subprime-backed paper. the money had to go somewhere, folks!
“The USDA report, Household Food Security in the United States, 2007, says that 38.2 million Americans live in households that suffer directly from hunger and food insecurity, including nearly 14 million children. That figure is up from 31 million Americans in 1999.”
And, assuming every fed agency has marching order to LIE, it’s safe to assume the real numbers are much higher.
Japan’s got nothing on us, baby. And the bad news is just starting to pick up speed…
If stupid, fat, lazy ass Americans stopped using huge fucking SUV’s to drive to their neighbors house maybe food could be used to feed people. Just a thought.
Again, I would not trust this news story out of Japan via Australia. The Japanese economy is more planned and manipulated than Western economies. You should not think of the Japanese economy as being similar to that in the US but rather like that of Cuba. Asian economics experts like Chalmers Johnson do not call Japan a free market economy but rather a “developmental state” which is characterized by state-led macroeconomic planning.
I haven’t seen a butter shortage story in the Japanese English papers. Search the Japan Times, Asahi or Yomiuri and please show me any stories about a butter shortage.
This story is just fear mongering. There are good stories out there about biofeuls and food issues, but this ain’t one of them.
The naivete of some of the posters here is quite amazing. I see news items like this daily from all over the planet because I make it my business to know what’s really happening. And the dollar’s decline has roughly zero to do with the current food crisis; biofuels policies by OECD countries, drought and the revival of protectionist trade policies are the root causes besides population growth. Galen’s comment at the top is the correct one, as is frank1569’s. The internal contradictions of BAU are starting to explode with all the force and fury the Limits to Growth group said was likely to occur prior to Catton’s seconding their notions in Overshoot.
The non-negotiable American lifestyle is being tossed into the dumpster by Nature and the blowback has begun.
Jobson–at theoildrum.com blog we have several members who live in Japan, Korea, China, Singapore, etc., who provided additional input to this story and told us about the big wheat import fiasco mentioned in the above item, which I notice you ignore. Also, your comparison of Japan’s economy to Cuba’s is absurd.
In some ways, this is a very strange article. First there’s this bit.
“A sharp increase in the cost of imported cattle feed and a decline in milk imports, both of which are typically provided in large part by Australia, have prevented dairy farmers from keeping pace with demand.”
Excuse me, did they really mean to say that a decline in milk imports prevented dairy farmers from meeting demand? Huh? Sounds like the writer has seriously confused the corporations that purchase and package the milk with the Japanese dairy farmers. Maybe in Japan they are one in the same, but then I wouldn’t refer to them as ‘dairy farmers’. I’ve got a sneaking suspicious that this just shows that most of us are so far removed from the sources of our food that the writer doesn’t quite know where the milk comes from.
Then, there’s the 600 lb gorrilla in the room that’s never mentioned … biofuels. The article talks about spikes in prices and speculation on the futures market, but to me much of this is starting to be caused by the focus on biofuels. The diversion of crops into biofuels is going to have exactly this effect. Ie, its going to raise prices and cause food shortages because people will be able to make more money selling crops to biofuel uses.
The really big picture is that ‘markets’ don’t care about human needs, only profit. So if we turn all food distribution over to the invisible hand of the ‘markets’, what you’ll get is hungry people staring at empty shelves.
“World Bank, Pentagon: Global Warming Red Alert
Weather of Mass Destruction Bigger Threat Than Terrorism
February 22, 2004″
http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/bwi-wto/wbank/2004/0222pentagon.htm
karlof1, that oildrum.com link which you intimated as providing sources for the article is broken.
In any case, it really is inaccurate to think that the Japanese economy is like that of the US. Economists who can read Japanese and understand how that country is run do make a distinction, but the majority of Western journalists writing on Japan do not understand that Japan has a “developmental state economy” which is significantly different from an American free market economy. It’s apples to oranges.
Even in this story one can see the how different the Japanese economy is from America, “And the nation’s largest brewer, Kirin, is lifting beer prices for the first time in almost two decades to account for the soaring cost of barley.”
If the Japanese economy was like the American economy, I think the price of beer would have moved in 20 years.
Okay, I’ve found an Asahi article on the butter shortage in Japan, but it says that…
“Japan’s domestic production accounts for about 86 percent of total butter demand. But domestic raw milk production was cut in fiscal 2006 after a glut forced farmers to dispose of not only surplus milk, but also dairy cows. ”
http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200803140076.html
So, Asahi newspaper, the 2nd largest newspaper in Japan, is reporting the reason there is a butter shortage is because in 2006 the number of cows in Japan was decreased because there had been too much milk! This information doesn’t even appear in the Australian article.
Don’t you think we are being manipulated by this butter shortage story if just 2 years ago there was a milk surplus in Japan?
The reasons are being manipulated, the control of food and who has it is real.
From one of the local pizzerias- In last 3 years pizza flour $11 to $30. Natural gas for ovens doubled.
Some is real increase, some is manipulation by agribusiness, and some promoted by biofuel use of crops.
Global warming and its reprecussions, the water and food crisis will trump any concern about GWOT.
If the dairy farmers and milk suppliers in Japan are unable to meet the demand, it is not just a poorly written sentence or two in an article. Here in Hawaii, our local dairies have been closing their doors, and selling off their herds as meat for the past 5 years that I know of, because of increased energy and feed costs. The last dairy on Oahu closed this year, and the Big Island now has only two, which are asking for a big price increase or else they will join the list of out of business farmers.
Milk is one of the most highly regulated and supported farm products [many get supports with out regulation] Unfortunately, the states set the prices, and often they have fallen way behind the actual costs. I’d imagine that is also true in Japan. If we lose our last local dairy farms here, we will be totally dependent on the big 48 to supply us. With the high cost of shipping, this means poorer quality milk, from unknown producers, and even higher prices. The middle-men do pass on every cost increase, usually using it as an excuse to double the price of an item rather then raising it the 2% of actual cost increas. It costs money to update all those inventories you know…
It is not just dairy farms, chicken farmers are paying increased prices for their feed and shipping: we are now down to one egg producer on the island, and no locally raised chickens are offered as food except for the yearly cull of laying hens. If you don’t raise your own, you pay the costs. One store was advertising frozen chicken thighs at 6# for $12 today. Last year, you could have bought chicken breasts for that, or less.
Urban peoples really should get out of the asphalt jungle once in awhile and see where their food comes from - and not just by watching it on TV or video. The feed lots in Eastern Washington with black Angus crammed shoulder to shoulder in pens standing in their own shit as they wait for shipment to the slaughter house are always a treat to see. Or the smell of urea from a factory chicken farm. Maybe you’d rather visit the farm workers doing stoop labor under a broiling sun to pick the pretty strawberries that dress up your table. Don’t get there early though, the pesticides and fertilizers are usually sprayed early in the morning so they don’t evaporate off.
Farming is hard, dangerous, and expensive. As we’ve become increasingly urbanized we’ve found it easier and easier to ship these poorly paid projects to other countries, and count on modern transportation and supply lines, to keep our dinner table groaning under the weight of excess calories we consume. Works great, till Ma Nature closes the transportation grid.
Not only have we become divorced from the very staff of life, we have bulldozed up the farmland and paved it over for parking lots and developments. King County Washington, which was truck farming and dairies when I was a kid is now housing, Boeing, Microsoft and freeways, and parking lots. Even if we decided to become sustainable agriculturally once again, we’d be farming marginal land rather then the rich bottom lands that were farmed a hundred years ago.
Yes, the butter shortage in wealthy Japan is the real ‘canary in the coal mine’ for the industrial nations. We are used to famines in Africa, and Asia, and Haiti. But Japan?
You know, there are consumer rights groups in Japan. It is not like they don’t exist. They are very effective and have made major gains in getting more and more legislation to protect consumers in Japan.
However, they are not represented in this story, so we don’t know how they are fighting this obvious manipulation of the supply of butter in Japan.
All we get is poor Mrs. Watanabe. Give me a break. Where is the lawyer representing consumer rights?
With there having been a milk surplus in Japan only as recent as 2006, this is apparently more of a consumer fraud story than a food shortage story.
Anyone interested in vegetarianism? Take a peek at Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.
How about birth control? This seems to be harder for humans than the rest of the animal kingdom. Why do we always seem stuck on, “I wanna this? I wanna that?” (Including, “my very OWN
babies)? How about delving into some ancient wisdom??
Here we go…it’s a long slide down from here folks…
So, the issue of food security has in part been manipulated to encourage people to be nihilistic and grow their own food rather than to encourage people to organize and fight back together as consumers etc…
But the Japanese butter shortage is a government induced shortage due to a government issued decrease in the production of milk in Japan after 2006. From Asahi newspaper…
“Japan’s domestic production accounts for about 86 percent of total butter demand. But domestic raw milk production was cut in fiscal 2006 after a glut forced farmers to dispose of not only surplus milk, but also dairy cows.
Now, milk is sold mainly for higher-priced drink or cheese production.
In fiscal 2006, milk for butter and skim milk production dropped 7 percent from a year earlier. The first 10 months of fiscal 2007 saw a further 4 percent drop. Domestic butter production fell from 85,500 tons in fiscal 2005 to 78,000 tons in fiscal 2006.”
http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200803140076.html
Then we get the chicken littles like baruch and xntrk saying the sky is falling over this bs.
Friends in Japan told me of this shortage before it hit the international news. Whether it is real or ( as they suspect) nervous buyers remains to be seen. Either way, Japan has to stop relying on the specious arguments of neoclassical economists for its food security.
jobson refers to me as ‘Chicken Little’…
He may be right from his perspective. However, I am an Islander, and have lived on islands for over 40 years. I am VERY aware of how little it takes to disrupt the flow of imported ‘necessities’. When the ILWU goes on strike people stock up on rice and toilet paper. I raise dogs, I don’t have many - only 3 - and they are not giants, but I ‘hoard’ a goodly supply of dog food, just in case. I also have a rooster that I feed, so I have seen the price of ‘2-way scratch go up over 25% in the past 6 months. Mr Red doesn’t eat a lot, as he’s actually wild, but he comes to the door and complains if he misses a meal. My cat also depends on the commercial market for her food. I think she’d starve if she had to depend on the few little reptiles that are slow enough for her to catch.
I raise lots of fruit - Much easier then vegetables - and I either trade the surplus for vegetables, or donate it to the food bank.
Islands, whether they are in Puget Sound, Hawaii, Japan, or the Caribbean are extremely vulnerable to food shortages. I don’t know of any today that have a totally sustainable agriculture. Here, we don’t grow grain at all. White potatoes rather then sweet ones don’t do well either, so a starchy filler for empty bellies [and dog food] can be hard to come by. I’m going to plant a breadfruit. They were the Polynesian’s ‘potato’ and are hardy here.
Is any, or all of this necessary? Who in the hell knows? But, I’d rather be worried about what to do with a food surplus, then be dependent on Matson to keep freight costs in the realm of my pocket book! We are already paying the highest power and gasoline costs in the country, so I know how generous the Corporate Powers are when the choice is feeding people or improving their bottom line!
The long term sustainable human population is probably a few billion at most. Four or more billions of humans will have to exit the world earlier than expected. Starvation is only one of the mechanisms that will bring this about.
Friends in Japan were not aware of any butter shortage. One joked and asked if I didn’t mean a butler shortage. Seems it is pretty insignifcant but could be used to create a lot of fear.
The Japan Times also says that the butter shortage is due to the government directive to reduce milk production in Japan…
“Supermarkets and other retailers are suffering the butter shortages mainly because domestic production of raw milk has been reduced in the last few years due to sluggish demand for milk.”
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20080406a2.html
So, it is pretty clear now, that this Australian newspaper article is misleading. They don’t tell you the truth as to why there is a butter shortage in Japan.
Question I have are:
1) If I could fact check this article by simply googling “butter shortage japan” in 10 seconds, why couldn’t The Age?
2) Why did Common Dreams even re-print this inaccurate article?
The problem seems to their racist immigration policy which keeps able bodied people out of the labor market. What they need is an infusion of poor people whom they can exploit for less and less wages. There is no reason why they cannot create a poor peoples paradise like in Iraq and Afghanistan where tens of thousand Bangladeshis, Indians etc. have found employment working for the American occupation. May be Japan should once again think about invading some country.
Common Dreams has been on an anti-biofuel rant for about a month now. They feature an overly hyped article about food shortages that blames ethanol instead of overpopulation, climate change and higher energy prices. Many of these articles are merely editorials by average joe’s.
HAHAHAHAHA!!!! Fight together as consumers!!! and wage slaves! HAHAHAHA! Against who? Your Boss? The police? People at the end of a long old table with more money than God? Didn’t you ask where in Japan, the butter shortage happened? Their Barracks? Boy you would be pissed if you had a butter shortage! You have a wife to give this much crap to Jobson?
Jobson thinks the reason is being bad! God would heal them of the butter shortage if they followed the rules!
No doubt this butter shortage is being reported more because of its affects on the 40,000 American military personnel and additional embassy staff in Japan rather than what the average Japanese person cares.
What does Yoshi need butter for? It would matter as much to him as a wasabi shortage in the US matters to you.
A “dire” butter shortage in Japan, my foot. My god, what horror is next? A Grey Poupon shortage in China?
A 130% rise in the global cost of wheat in the past year, caused partly by surging demand from China and India and a huge injection of speculative funds into wheat futures
The capitalist media is very manipulative. Such articles as the above illustrate it perfectly. The article did state the cause of the food crisis (speculation). But the one sentence is buried in ten more paragraphs of “human interest” fluff. How can the reader focus on the core problem when it is barely mentioned? Most people won’t engage in a discussion of the core problem when it is so briefly mentioned. The problem is mentioned to head off charges of suppression. But is kept shriveled up as too small to threaten the capitalist bosses who created the problem.
Market speculation is a violation of the basic market rules that make markets work for the society’s better interests. As far back as the 1776, Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith demanded no producer control over demand, no speculation, no schemes to capture market shares. Nobody is worried about Japan. At risk are the many third world countries under the capitalist thumb, including Mexico, losing their food sovereignty. Suggestion: Sell all of your global “securities”. Invest in your local small-scale industry. Demand land, water, food sovereignty for all.
There is so much wrong with this story.
Common Dreams never should have posted it.
Just to add to all the errors already noted by everyone above, Japan’s population is hardly “pampered.”
The Japanese work long hours, live in cramped houses and endure plenty of difficult conditions (without complaint for the most part.)
I’ve never heard any foreigners living in Japan, no matter where they were from and this includes Australians, ever say life was easy in Nihon. No one there is pampered.
I attended a speaker series last evening and learned that the US has only a TWO WEEK supply of wheat available.
Solid comments on this one. Thanks again, CD’ers.
xntrk: Outstanding commentary, my friend. The same thing has been happening in California and many other states. Communalism (not communism) will be the model for the future if we are to survive. “One for all, and all for one.”
I mentioned part of a documentary I saw about “simplicity living” a few months ago, and must send for the video to show at our Green Party and film group in our peace and justice coalition. The doc. focused on Jim Merkel, an engineer, organic farmer and environmentalist, and his lifestyle. This man is a real inspiration and I encourage all of you to investigate (if you haven’t already) this movement.
I love the Swedes but could they please “rescind” Milton Friedman’s Nobel Prize in “economics?”
The Best to You All.
I live in Japan and would like to confirm that for the ordinary consumer there definitely IS a butter shortage here. I cannot say whether this situation is “real” or contrived but it does exist. Yesterday my local supermarket did have 100 gram sticks but they were limited to one per customer.
I live in the United States and prices are indeed climbing fast thanks to those rotten speculators. I live on a small fixed income, so I tried something. I planted a potato in a bag of potting mix with holes cut in it for drainage, and that sucker is growing like a champ IN THE HOUSE.
I am also growing herbs, and I intend to plant peppers, tomatoes, other potato species, and a few other things to pad my food budget.