Author: positive solutions Board, drawing from the title: Vision China
In the article “Potato Defence Warfare and China’s Food Security”, the Office analyzed the importance of food security and pointed out that the key to ensuring food security is to increase food self-sufficiency.
It is not easy to increase the self-sufficiency rate of food. Take Japan, for example, there are fewer people, and the food self-sufficiency rate is less than 50%, facing a huge gap.
But in the 2018 Global Food Security Index Report, Japan’s food security rankings are much higher than China’s.
The secret of Japan is overseas.
1. Layout overseas, 12 million hectares in Japan
For developed countries that are not bad money, overseas Putian is the basic operation.
According to the global public database on land transactions and the non-governmental organization GRAIN, as of June 2017, more than half of the world’s countries have more or less overseas polders, involving 89 investment countries and 87 host countries. The area of cultivated land involved is more than 57 million hectares.
Among them, Japan has a 20% share of 12 million hectares. This number is already three times that of Japanese farmland!
The history of Japanese overseas 屯田 can be traced back at least to the Meiji Restoration period. More than 150 years ago, Japan expanded its overseas farms by sending farm workers to Peru. By 1908, Japan had been overseas in Brazil, Colombia and other countries. After the Second World War, Japan shifted its investment target from South America to the Asian-African market, and overseas cultivated land investment reached its peak.
Meiji Restoration Period
As a neighbor of Japan, China is naturally the first choice for Japan to develop overseas fields. From 1989 to 2004, the only foreign investment in China’s foreign agricultural FDI increased from 1.8 billion yen to 11.3 billion yen, involving as many as 233 investment projects. By 2015, China has become the country with the largest investment in agriculture, forestry and fisheries related companies in Japan, involving as many as 242 Japanese companies.
Japan Foreign Agriculture FDI
In recent years, Japan’s overseas investment in Putian has been very popular. In 2013, Japanese companies signed an investment contract with Brazil on a lease basis to use 22,000 hectares of farmland for food production. In 2014, it signed a contract with Angola to use 75,000 hectares of farmland for food production.
Japan’s overseas cultivated land investment distribution area
Japan’s high-profile initiatives have also served as a model. South Korea, which has always despised Japan and studied Japan, has also actively participated in overseas polders in order to solve its own food security problems.
2. The United States broke the grain and suffered a big loss
Japan Overseas Putian has nothing to do with real estate development, but considers food security in a practical way.
Reviewing history, Japan’s road to food security is extremely difficult.
From 1947 to 1949, Japan ushered in a post-war baby boom and its population increased dramatically. In 1950, Japan’s population reached 84.11 million, and then increased by 10 million per 10 years.
Japanese Baby Boomers
The increase in population has brought vitality to the Japanese economy and has also increased food demand in Japan. At the same time, Japan’s own food production is declining.
Japan’s small land area and poor land are not conducive to the development of agriculture, and there is no way to increase agricultural income.
After 1958, a large number of agricultural laborers left the countryside and turned to towns during the urbanization process, which further weakened the vitality of the countryside. In 1970, the proportion of elderly people over 65 years old in Japan reached 7%, and they entered the ranks of aging countries. The elderly left behind in rural areas were unable to shoulder the heavy responsibility of food production. All of the above reasons have directly weakened Japan’s domestic food production.
Changes in rural population after 1960
You can’t solve it yourself, you can only turn to outsiders. Japan began to import a large amount of agricultural products, especially in the United States, and graduallyIt has a serious dependence on American agricultural products.
After the Second World War, Japan was under the umbrella of the United States, and the United States had little problem in raising Japan with the world’s largest agricultural production capacity.
America’s aid to Japan from 1951 to 1954
Unexpectedly, the first oil crisis broke out in 1973, and the drought in the United States caused a sharp rise in cereal prices. As a result, the United States urgently adopted a policy of prohibiting grain exports to stabilize domestic prices.
Japan suffered a bad meal and suffered a big loss.
After learning the lesson, Japan decided to re-take the road of international agricultural investment that was opened 100 years ago and overseas.
3. The government and the people are united and promote the overseas field
The train runs fast, all by the headband. For the overseas expansion of domestic agriculture, the Japanese government has provided meticulous support from policy to financial resources.
In 1999, Japan enacted a new Basic Agricultural Law that incorporated food security into the monitoring of agricultural policies. In 2001, the Japanese government promulgated the “Agricultural Basic Law Implementation Plan” to further consolidate support for overseas agriculture.
The development of Japanese agricultural law
In international cooperation, the Japanese government has spared no effort and has repeatedly called on countries to relax their policies and give a green light to overseas Putian.
From 2009 to 2015, the Japanese government achieved agricultural investment of up to 400 million U.S. dollars through bilateral or multilateral trade agreements and free trade agreements. The investment in real money has greatly enhanced Japan’s global food security impact.
1960~2015 Japanese Government Agricultural Investment
If you want to develop overseas, you will naturally have no money. Various government departments in Japan have cooperated with financial institutions to prepare sufficient ammunition for overseas investment in agriculture: various funds and banks provide long-term low-interest preferential loans for enterprises, and the state treasury also provides 50% financial support for Japanese private enterprises interested in overseas investment. .
Japan International Cooperation Bank (JBIC)
With the strong support of the government, Japanese companies have bought or leased overseas land and farms, and they have taken large overseas farmland.
After the Second World War, the comprehensive trading company was the main force of Japanese agricultural foreign investment. For example, since the 1970s, MarubeniThe company leased land in the Philippines to grow tropical fruits such as bananas and pineapples. In 2012, it leased 78,000 hectares of land in the Philippines, making it the largest foreign-owned company in the local leasehold land.
4. Rex Rabbit Caves, go hand in hand
As the saying goes, the three caves of Rex Rabbit, in order to ensure food security, it is not enough to buy and lease overseas farmland. Japan has other safeguards.
One, order farming.
Since 1984, Japan has been the world’s largest importer of agricultural products. In 2018, Japan’s total imports of agricultural products reached a record 6.63 trillion yen. Japanese companies buy large amounts of money every year to source agricultural products around the world.
图: Total imports of Japanese agricultural products from 2011 to 2018
Second, joint operation.
In 2012, Mitsui & Co., Ltd. invested heavily in the purchase of a 25% stake in Australia’s largest wheat trading company, CBH, to control the source of wheat through joint operations.
The third is M&A.
In 2012, Marubeni Corporation spent $3.6 billion to acquire Gavilon, the third largest grain producer in the United States, and acquired more than 140 food distribution centers and large grain distribution networks in the United States, as well as Gavilon in Brazil and Australia. And bases for major food producing areas such as Ukraine.
Gavilon Food Distribution Point
The 2018 Global Food Security Index Report assesses and ranks food security in 113 countries around the world. Japan ranks 18th, China ranks 46th, and Japan is much higher than China.
2018 Global Food Security Index Ranking
Under the premise that 60% of the grain needs to be imported, Japan can make its own food security to such a degree.
5. Overseas Putian, leaving a back road for food security
In China today, although the food self-sufficiency rate is as high as 90%, there is still a structural shortage in agriculture. For example, soybeans and oil crops are the soft underbelly of our country, and more than 70% of soybeans need to be imported.
It should also be noted that the problem of the world’s agro-ecological environment and the rise of trade protectionism have brought challenges to China’s food security.
It is difficult to expand the cultivated land of the family, and the imported food is not reliable. It is a dilemma.
At this time, it is a feasible solution to enhance the reliability of imported food through overseas methods of dumping, and it is also a way to stay.
100 years ago, Japan began to smash overseas, and now it has seized the opportunity and achieved remarkable results.
This country does have something extraordinary.