Evaluating Japanese agricultural policy from an eco-socialist perspective

Abstract

When discussing the sustainability of agriculture, we cannot help but turn to the specific characteristics of farming labour. It is from such an eco-socialist perspective, of course in a very broad sense, that we can easily understand the incompatibility of environmental protection of rural areas and an internationalising market of agricultural products. Furthermore, as the analysis of the Japanese case has shown, to integrate agricultural production policy with environmental protection policy, we have no alternative but construct a decentralised market where local people can physically confirm the credibility of environmental safety for themselves. In this sense, the agricultural environmental policy reform pursued in Western industrial countries, including in Japan, can clearly not meet these requirements, if not moving along a wrong direction. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.