大会講演
Japan in the Global Agribusiness Network
2026 年 62 巻 1 号 p. 44-51
詳細
2026 年 62 巻 1 号 p. 44-51
We examine Japanese ties to global agribusiness powerhouses in nine sectors: cattle, chemicals, tractors and equipment, hogs, fertilizer, grains, poultry, turkey, tractors and equipment and seeds. We move from the frontstage of these agribusinesses into their backstage of connected leaders and private firms acting across the globe. We provide an interactive link for interested readers to see the ways in which Japanese entities network into these global agribusinesses.
Global financial investment in agriculture has created unprecedented levels of consolidation, yet simultaneously confusion about who ultimately benefits from and holds power within the sprawling apparatus of the largest agribusiness firms. A variety of financial investment mechanisms, different reporting requirements, and complicated multilayered subsidiary forms befuddle attempts to understand how much multinational conglomerates control across sectors. Such conglomerates can leverage their power to coordinate prices, dictating terms of trade and costs at the grocery store across a variety of commodities (Vaheesan, 2020). This ability to control, but simultaneously obfuscate, informs discontent in rural communities alongside farmer and peasant exodus, as some firms have used innocuously named subsidiaries to avoid financial accountability for pollution events and mask private land acquisitions (Ashwood et al., 2014; Ashwood, 2018; Goldman, Peluso and Wolford, 2024).
We seek to address financialization’s obfuscation through a framework inspired by Irving Goffman (1956), where backstage relationships beguile frontstage claims of competitive prowess confined to specific sectors1. We track the relationships between managerial positions and organizational forms by beginning with the frontstage of 47 leading global agricultural powerhouses in cattle, chemicals, hogs, fertilizer, grains, poultry, turkey, tractors and equipment, and seeds. Then, we present a methodology to identify and consider backstage relationships that combines organizational attenuated theory with sensitivity to managerial positions. Last, we analyze Japanese ties into the global agribusiness network. We find Japan to be most engaged with global firms involved in the frontstage sectors of chemicals, and tractors and equipment. In the backstage, we find the business purposes of Japanese firms affiliated with the global network to be cross-sectoral, particularly emphasizing manufacturing, trade, finance, and professional activities. We conclude by considering what cross-sectoral conglomerate concentration may mean for the financialization of agriculture in Japan.
The financialization of agriculture is part of the increased role of financial thinking and complicated legal forms in shaping business motives and societal outcomes at large. A baseline definition is the shift in capitalist accumulation from productive purposes, i.e., producing a commodity with more use-value, to financial purposes, i.e., a commodity with only exchange value. Financialization takes on cultural forms, where neoliberal ideas shape financial motives enacted through financial actions, institutes and markets within the home and abroad (Zaloom and James, 2023). It denotes increasingly complicated bureaucratic structures, whether the organizations structuring the work, like firms; those financing it, like banks; or new assets, like private securities. Scholars have emphasized institutional investment and financial securities as legal tools that increase the saliency of finance in society, whether through investment funds or income streams that come from a pool of underlying assets. Krippner (2011) pointed to financialization as an outcome of crisis—where to make money, nonfinancial firms shifted investments from production to financial investment. Others emphasize financialization as embedded in corporate leaders’ infighting, their attempts to reduce tax liabilities, and positioning themselves for takeovers (Knafo and Dutta, 2020). Scholars have documented the role of meso-level structures, where organizations like the multilayered corporate subsidiary increases the likelihood of financial malfeasance (Prechel, Blazek and Amaral, 2025).
Financialization, through these complicated and distanced investment mechanisms and organizations, obfuscates how much cross-sectoral control exists between firms and the people managing them (Knafo and Dutta, 2020). In agriculture, scholars document how land grabs that are experienced traumatically locally connect back to webs of beneficiaries taking across the globe as part of a new asset class. Scholars widely recognize cross-sectoral ownership by asset management firms like Blackrock and outwardly productive companies, like the privately held grain giant Cargill and the publicly traded Corteva Agrisciences (Clapp, 2022). Yet connecting firm level takings locally to aggregate conglomerates is riddled with methodological challenges (Bourgoin et al., 2025). Such obfuscation has yet to be addressed by judicial departments that have the authority to breakup firms or prevent mergers, but only within narrowly defined markets—for example separating pig and hog farming from processing (Lande and Vaheesan, 2020). Such narrow market frames used in lawsuits miss the conglomerate structure that typifies holding companies that own across sectors as part of their risk aversion strategies and attempts to capture market control (Lande and Vaheesan, 2020; Knafo and Dutta, 2020). With antitrust litigation as one of the main tools to prevent monopoly and oligopoly power and keep prices more reasonable, getting a better sense of the extent of financial as well as cross-sector investment is crucial. Without it, obfuscation will continue to enable dispossession, providing a barrier to antitrust enforcement as well as community empowerment.
We use a frontstage and backstage approach to address this obfuscation, where we look behind the curtain of powerhouses into their more complicated network of firms and the people running them. We begin with the frontstage of mostly publicly traded firms but also privately held ones, known by name and studied in the literature as global leaders in poultry, hog, cattle, tractors and equipment, turkey, grains, chemicals, seeds, and fertilizer (see Table A1, Online Appendix). We then enter the backstage of these firms where we understand the obfuscation of financialization and intersectoral ownership to be at work. This pragmatic and praxis-based approach enables people from different countries to understand how agribusinesses in their own nations interact with others across the world.
We created a dataset from Sayari Graph, a commercial risk platform that compiles relational data by drawing on over 6.3 billion records pertaining to 645 million companies and 711 million people. We used a platform-mediated seeded discovery strategy to search for other entities (people or firms) related to these 47 global powerhouses, enabling us to study cross-sectoral relationships. This generated a total of 16,475 entity files that we downloaded from Sayari in 2023 and then consolidated into one master dataset
The primary entity files downloaded included two types of information: (1) relational network data (e.g., ownership and leadership ties) and (2) attribute data (e.g., business purpose, country, location, legal form). We cleaned the data to reduce overlaps in entities and standardize naming conventions. For a final stage of cleaning, a small subset of entities was translated using Google Gemini and then interpreted by the authors.
For the network analysis presented in this paper, we removed any relationships that did not pertain to leadership or ownership, as Sayari includes data on shipments and securities. By ownership, we mean subsidiaries, legal predecessors and successors, business partners, shareholders, and beneficial owners. By leadership, we mean directors, officers, managers, founders, and members of boards of directors. This backstage—the leadership and ownership network—includes 16,651 firms or people (see Table A2, Online Appendix). Below, we analyze only the nodes that have Japanese affiliations in two parts. First, we map all firms in the network with a Japanese affiliation. Second, we examine only the nodes that are the primary entity files and have the most detailed information, including business purposes and alternative names.
The agricultural powerhouses’ global network includes 197 Japanese nodes (see Table A2). We identified Japanese nodes based on a country attribute determined through an entity’s operating address or its activities. Seventy-one of these nodes are people and 126 are firms. All Japanese-affiliated individuals operate across multiple countries, most commonly between Great Britain and Japan as directors of Kubota Corp., a firm we return to in the next section.
These Japanese nodes, and up to two ties away from them, can be interactively engaged with through a graph found online (see URL in caption under Figure 1). This graph includes node type as well as the relationship type, allowing interested viewers to see which people and firms hold what kinds of relationships to one another in the backstage (Fig. 1).
Global Agribusinesses in Japan1)
1) The graphic can be interacted with at https://app.polinode.com/networks/explore/6962fcf99c272df1afae1038/6962fcf99c272df1afae13fa. Also visit acre.wisc.edu for other interactive options with additional data.
Japanese firms appear in the dataset through their connections to large agribusiness actors (see Table A2). Of these, thirteen are represented with full primary entity files, while others appear only through relational data. These cases are not intended to comprehensively capture Japanese agriculture, but they are meaningful for understanding how Japanese firms and people are embedded in global agribusiness networks. Among all Japanese entities, Kubota Corp. has the most relationships with 97 leadership or ownership ties (see Table 1). We use Kubota Corp.’s English name based on an aggregation process in R where we consolidated name variants according to the one that had the highest number of connections. But Kubota Corp. operates by many other names, including 株式会社久保田. Name variations can be explored through our interactive graph (see Fig. 1).
Japanese Affiliated Entities Uncovered Through Primary Searches
| Entity name | Country Affiliation(s) | Total Degrees | Frontstage Sector |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kubota Corp. | ARE, BRA, CHN, COL, ECU, EGY, GBR, IND, JOR, JPN, MEX, MMR, NOR, NZL, PAN, SGP, SVN, THA, TUR, USA | 97 | Tractors & Equipment |
| CNH Industrial America LLC | BRA, CHN, DEU, ECU, FRA, GBR, IND, ITA, JPN, MEX, PAN, TUR, UKR, USA | 91 | Tractors & Equipment |
| Siam Kubota Corp. Co. Ltd. | COL, THA, ECU, USA, JPN, IND | 24 | Tractors & Equipment |
| Archer Daniels Midland Singapore Pte. Ltd. | CHN, JPN, SGP | 12 | Grains |
| Iriso Electronics Co. Ltd. | CHN, HKG, JPN, USA | 9 | Chemicals |
| Arysta Lifescience Corp. | ARG, BEL, BRA, CHN, ECU, IND, JPN, MEX, PAK, PRY, THA, TUR, USA | 7 | Chemicals |
| Kubota Corp. Dubai Branch | ARE, JPN | 3 | Tractors & Equipment |
| CNH America LLC | CAN, CHN, DEU, DNK, ECU, FRA, GBR, IND, IRL, ITA, JPN, MEX, PAN, POL, USA | 2 | |
| Nobuhiro Tamura | NZL, JPN | 2 | Chemicals |
| Syngenta Japan Co. Ltd. | JPN | 1 | Chemicals, Seeds |
| Arysta Lifesciences Europe | BEL, JPN | 1 | Chemicals |
| Dow Chemical Japan Ltd. | JPN, USA | 1 | Chemicals, Seeds |
| Kubota KK | BRA, JPN | 1 | Tractors & Equipment |
Kubota Corp. is also active in 18 other countries and holds shares in two different primary entities: Siam Kubota Corp. Co. Ltd. and Kubota Corp. Dubai Branch (see Table 1). Likewise, tractor and equipment producer CNH Industrial America LLC is active in Japan according to shipping trade records from Panama Imports and Exports. CNH America LLC, a different firm, also does business in the country according to USA trade records on imports documented through Bills of Landings and information available on exports recorded through Pan Declaration Numbers from Panama Imports and Exports records.
The fifth primary entity links the global grain powerhouse Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) to Japan (see Table 1). ADM’s Singapore subsidiary holds a 4.62% share in the Japanese firm Spiber 株式会社 (Spiber Inc.), according to the Japan EDINET Securities Report Database. Spiber Inc. is a bio-venture company that uses genetic engineering and precision fermentation to create synthetic materials that are like silk and cashmere as well as develop functional food proteins (Spiber, 2025). From a frontstage view, Archer Daniels Midland is understood as a U.S. publicly traded firm headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, that “processes oilseeds, corn, wheat, cocoa and other agricultural commodities” (Forbes, 2026a).
Overall, from a frontstage powerhouse perspective, chemical firms are prominent in Japan. Iriso Electronics Co. Ltd., according to China LHNB MOFCOM Foreign Investment Directory, is active in Japan. The entity also operates under the name (Hong Kong) Global International Freight Co Ltd., and holds shares in United Phosphorus Shanghai Co Ltd. UPL Limited (United Phosphorus Limited), from a frontstage view, is one of the largest chemical producers in the world. UPL is headquartered in India where it, “operates as a generic crop protection, chemicals and seeds company” (Forbes, 2026b). Another UPL related chemical entity is active in Japan—Arysta Lifescience Corp. (name variant 爱利思达生命科学株式会社). The firm is headquartered in Tokyo in the suburb of Akashi-cho and has an operating address in Osaka in the city district of Kita-Ku. The only person uncovered through primary file searches also is affiliated with UPL’s Arysta. Nobuhiro Tamura directs Pipz Ltd. and Bloomz New Zealand Ltd. Then, Arysta Lifescience Corp. Japan—a different entity uncovered through secondary searches as discussed in the prior section—also owns shares in Bloomz New Zealand Ltd. Likewise the firm Arysta Lifesciences Europe has its address registered in Tokyo, Japan, according to a company record from Belgium.
Two other global chemical powerhouses are active in Japan: Syngenta Japan Co. Ltd. and Dow Chemical Japan Ltd. Syngenta is part of the ChemChina, Syngenta and COFCO conglomerate—one of the largest chemical producers in the world, with some shares held by the State Council, also known as the Chinese Communist Party. Syngenta Japan Co. Ltd., which also operates as Syngenta Japan KK amongst other name variants, is headquartered in Japan in the city of Chuo Ku in the Harumi district. Syngenta Japan Co. Ltd. is a subsidiary of Syngenta Ag and the China National Chemical Corp. Ltd. Dow Chemical Japan Ltd. is part of the Corteva and DuPont conglomerate, one of the largest chemical companies in the world that on the frontstage, is mostly affiliated with the United States. More specifically, Dow Chemical Japan Ltd. is a subsidiary of Dow Japan Holdings KK and Rhom & Haas Electronic Materials KK, according to SEC 10-K files from the United States. Dow Chemical Japan Ltd. has an operating address in the Tennoz Central Tower in Tokyo, Japan, and imports according to trade records from Colombia and U.S. Imports and Exports.
Primary entity files on these firms list their business purposes, which is finer grained and more nuanced than their frontstage presentation, what we began with (see Table 1). Likewise, it helps contextualize the futility of measuring market control in a general agricultural sector, let alone the even more particular markets used in antitrust enforcement, for example cull cow auction prices in a small area of the U.S. state of Wisconsin (Coatney and Tack, 2014). Sayari identifies business codes, standardized as International Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities, Revised Version 4 (ICIS4), with four level digit classifications. For these thirteen entities, nine of which provide ICIS4 codes, we analyzed their business purposes further. We aggregated the codes into sections—broad groupings used by ISIC—to understand their activities (Fig. 2). Only one Japanese firm is listed as engaged in agricultural activities: Syngenta Japan Co. Ltd., which describes itself as producing agrochemicals and intermediates, as well as seeds and seedlings (see Fig. 2). The remaining economic activities mostly pertain to trade and manufacturing. Manufacturing activities further detail divisions and classes embedded within these sections, which provide a bit more agricultural nuance. There, three firms take on business purposes that include agriculture as manufacturers of agricultural machinery: Kubota Corp., Siam Kubota Corp. Co. Ltd. and CNH America LLC. But all of these firms, except for Syngenta Japan Co Ltd., have business purposes other than agricultural ones. Kubota Corp. manufactures basic metals and other fabricated metal products; sewerage; specialized construction activities; architectural and engineering activities; technical testing and analysis; scientific research and development; and temporary employment agency activities. Archer Daniels Midland Singapore Pte. Ltd. and Kubota KK are financial holding companies—captured in the financial and insurance group—with Kubota KK also completing activities of head offices (see Fig. 2).
ISIC4 Backstage Business Sections for Japanese Firms in Global Agribusiness Network
Bringing the backstage formatively into analyses of what is understood as global agribusiness helps elucidate how intertwined with other industrial activities agricultural firms are, including financial and insurance activities as well as administrative activities. This suggests that any attempts to reduce corporate control over just futures for peasants, farmers, rural communities, and people who eat across the world requires a multi-sectoral approach, enabled by networked and internationally sensitive methods.
Japan connects into the global network of the most powerful agribusinesses. We found Japanese firms or people to be mostly connected to chemical and tractor and equipment sectors, although the country also has ties into cattle, hog, grain and seed production. Four of the five major agrochemical conglomerates are active in Japan: BASF; Bayer, Monsanto; COFCO, ChemChina, Syngenta; Corteva Agriscience, Dow, DuPont; and United Phosphorus Limited. Kubota Corp., with business purposes that include manufacturing agricultural equipment, has the most relationships of any Japanese entity within our network.
At a broader level, the Japanese case underscores the central argument of the paper: conglomerate power in agriculture operates backstage through nonagricultural and financialized infrastructures. In Japan, firms are mostly involved in the manufacture of metals and machinery, but also much more. Kubota Corp. has business purposes of scientific research and development, employment activities, architecture and engineering, sewage, and a plethora of other manufacturing purposes. Separately, the firm Kubota KK handles its financial and insurance activities. Similarly, Archer Daniels Midland Singapore Pte. Ltd. is a financial services entity. These configurations suggest that participation in the agribusiness conglomerate network in Japan occurs less through the agricultural sector and more through financial and industrial intermediation.
These findings have implications for how scholars and regulators conceptualize antitrust, market concentration, and rural dispossession. Current antitrust regimes remain committed to narrow market definitions (e.g., cull cows as a specific market geography within the cattle sector, or even more generally, cattle versus hogs). On the other hand, a backstage approach to agribusiness connects finance, manufacturing, and logistics all in the consideration of how to break up concentrated economic power. Moving forward, international conglomerates likely demand international action for change.
Methodologically, the paper demonstrates how relational data can be used to trace conglomerates across jurisdictions, even where public disclosure is partial. This approach is portable to other national contexts and other commodities, including rice, where cross-sectoral ownership remains understudied. In conclusion, we provide this analysis as authors with little knowledge of Japan, but a capacity to pull out Japanese specific entities to (we hope) help provide the aggregate as well as the specific for insiders in Japan seeking a more just future for agriculture and those who eat.
Funding from the Economic Security Project and Food System 6 helped support this research. We give our thanks to Hart Feuer and the other organizers of “Financialization of the Food System: Contextualization in Japan and Developing a Research Agenda.”
