Abstract
At present, verification of the Current Agricultural Basic Law is underway in order to review the Law. It is considered that the following three points should be taken up in the verification: (1) the basic character of the Current Agricultural Basic Law regarding domestic food supply; (2) the specifics of the policies in operation under the Law; (3) the impact of the policies on domestic agricultural production. Regarding the above three points, this paper focuses on wheat, which is highly dependent on foreign imports and whose production expansion is advocated in the Japanese government’s “Food Security Program.” This paper specifically analyzes border measures for wheat import, policies for domestic wheat production, trends in wheat imports, trends in domestic production of wheat, and trends in markup reduction and price/income compensation. In conclusion, we precipitate four policy issues: (a) operation of border measures to curb imports; (b) raising of unit price/income compensation; (c) securing financial resources for price/income compensation that can respond to compensation unit price increases and markup reductions; and considering these three issues, (d) setting targets for crop change subsidies and double crop subsidies, and subsidies unit price.
