Abstract
This paper first clarifies that the neoliberalist food security discourse and policy has in fact failed. Under the consistent increase of trade dependence, export ratio, and import dependence since the 1990s, i.e., the progress of world agriculture trajectory, food insecurity indicators have clearly deteriorated, especially in the 2010s, both in the world and in least developed countries.
Japan has been caricaturing itself as a world agriculture trajectory by rapidly increasing its puny exports while further lowering its notably low self-sufficiency ratio, and has been increasing its food-insecure population in recent years. Internal concerns about the continuation of food security along this trajectory, include the rapid growth and structurization of the trade deficit, the decline in the current account balance, the huge amount of outstanding government bonds causing the amount of foreing debt payment to approach that of agricultural imports along with the steadily increasing share of these bonds held by foreign investors. As external concerns, China and the U.S. have become the world's top agri-food importers, and the global grain and oilseed market has become a " politicized one " significantly influenced by the national policies and politics of these major countries.
Thus, Japan's food security vulnerability and food insecurity have become worse than those of other advanced capitalist countries, and a shift from the world agriculture trajectory is urgently needed. Necessary tasks are an expansion of the concept and policy practices of food security, reform of neoliberal economic policies and structures, and a national agricultural policy based on the autonomy and pluralism of nation-states, relying more on farm-internal, local, and domestic resources and markets in terms of both inputs and outputs, which is stable and resilient and can contribute to resource recycling and greenhouse gas reduction, as well as reconstruction of a trade framework that can guarantee these.
