Introduction
It is often pointed out that Japanese bureaucrats have substantial influence in the process
of political decision-making compared with those in the US. The field of farm policies
is no exception. The bureaucrats in the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries
are said not only to wield broad discretionary powers in the implementation of farm
policies, but also to often take a leading role among political actors, such as politicians
and interest groups, in the determination of basic farm policy directions.
Over-production and huge gluts of agricultural products have troubled policy
makers in developed countries over the last three decades. If the balance of supply and
demand, and consequently the prices, of these overly produced commodities were at the
mercy of the market, the reduction of farmers’ income caused by the decrease of their
prices would be unacceptable in the political process. Consequently, governments in
many developed countries have intervened in the market and introduced supply-control
policies such as market isolation and production quotas. Thus, it is not uncommon that
these governments also carry out direct interventions such as set-aside programs for
crops.
However, what is unique in the rice set-aside program in Japan is that the amount
of set-aside acreage for each prefecture is allocated at bureaucrats’ discretion and
imposed as an inescapable duty1. Furthermore, these allocations are unevenly assigned
among prefectures. For example, among prefectures, the ratio of set-aside acreage to the
amount of total acreage of paddy fields varies from a maximum of over 50% to a
minimum of less than 10%. This uneven allocation is calculated by bureaucrats instead
of the market, taking account of several factors following desirable policy directions,
such as low cost and high quality production.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the political process of this bureaucrats’
1 In addition to this duty of set-aside acreage, new developments and enlargements of
paddy fields have also been so stringently prohibited.
2