Set the rice free

Set the rice free

Scripps Howard News Service: The Philippines, like many poor nations where rice is a staple, is suffering from shortages and soaring prices. Japan is sitting on an unwanted surplus of 1.5 million tons of imported rice.

So it makes sense for Japan to sell its surplus to the Philippines, right? Not according to the vagaries of world trade law, where agricultural products remain heavily regulated and subsidized.

Among the world’s most heavily protected rice growers are Japan’s. U.S. rice growers, also subsidized but not as much, would like to crack that market. So over a decade ago, to get the U.S. and the World Trade Organization off its back, Japan agreed to buy a certain amount of U.S.-grown rice, about 700,000 tons, each year.

The rice sits around climate-controlled warehouses until it reaches a certain critical mass and then the Japanese get rid of the pile by using it to make beer, sending it as food aid to North Korea, or turning it into cattle, pig and chicken feed.

The Japanese government claims that its people don’t like the taste of imported rice, but at half the price of the domestic variety you would think they could learn to like it. But the Japanese farm lobby is even more powerful than our own.

In order to sell the rice to the Philippines, the Japanese had to get U.S. permission. And Washington said yes. It helped that this matter came to the attention of The Washington Post. “Even so,” noted Business Week, “giving Japan the green light wasn’t an easy decision for Washington.” The precedent of dumping rice on the world market when American growers are enjoying record profits is not one agribiz would like to set.

The solution to shortages and high prices is not stockpiles. Free trade is, although Japanese and American rice producers, not to mention the North Koreans and Japanese chickens, might not agree.