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Comment by yladiz | Hacker News Reader

It's an interesting experience seeing some shelves in 7-11 here in Tokyo partly empty due to this shortage -- outside of perishable goods like onigiri, it's pretty uncommon to see something like potato chips missing on a shelf. I wonder how long it'll take for the shortage to end, and if they'll be able to mitigate it by importing. One thing it doesn't mention in this article is that companies are pretty strict about quality of their imported goods like potatoes in Japan, probably due to the restrictions by the government, and are known for being hesitant about US potato quality, for example.

For those interested in more information about the shortage, here's an analysis from the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service: https://gain.fas.usda.gov/Recent%20GAIN%20Publications/Potat...

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> companies are pretty strict about quality of their imported goods like potatoes in Japan

>> Calbee spokeswoman "cited regulatory hurdles, which limit the amount of imported potatoes that can be used in products, as partly responsible for the shortage"

Japanese farmers are reliable voters. The evidence for an electoral motive, over a national security imperative, is Japanese farms' small plots and low yields [1]. The system is set up to maximise the number of farmers (i.e. voters who farm) over production.

[1] http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21576154-fewer-bigger-plo...

Off topic, but diversity in economic approaches like this is one of the beneficial things we lose as we embrace globalism.

I'm not sure if it's a result of this kind of protectionism or not, but in general meat and fruit especially is much higher quality than what I had when I was living in the US.

For fruit, the size of the individual fruits is smaller in general, but much more flavorful. The yields are lower (and thus price more expensive), but that's what happens when fruit is bred for flavor rather than volume.

I imagine meat has something to do with the diet. I don't think Japanese farmers are feeding their cows human candy.

Italy also has small farms and delicious vegetables.

Are US potatoes really lower quality than Japanese ones?

Likely it's just something similar to the argument that Japanese snow is unique so they don't need French skis[1, 2] when they attempted to frustrate the importation of Rossignol skis into Japan. Or they could not digest beef in the same quantities as other peoples when they wanted to thwart importation of US beef into Japan.

[1]http://www.nytimes.com/1988/03/06/weekinreview/the-world-jap...

[2]https://books.google.com/books?id=lfAu0Tl0018C&pg=PA105&lpg=...

I doubt it, especially since you can generally get a much wider range of varieties of potatoes in the US than in Japan, not just organic/non-organic, but different colored potatoes as well. My guess is that the rhetoric coming from the companies that US potato quality is lower is more due to the government being protectionist about national agriculture.

It's also probably due to the mentality that producers want specific kinds of potatoes for specific purposes and maybe only trust Japanese farmers to make the specific kind of potatoes the way they want them.

I remember seeing a "food security" campaign where demonstraters wanted the country to achieve 100% food sufficiency as a national security prerogative.

Wasn't sure if it was a strange form of nationalism, or a veiled lobbying effort by an interest group (the abundance of very small scale farmers across the countryside)

Intuitively it sounds quite sensible. The more a nation can sustain itself on its internal market, the longer they can hold out through negative external circumstances.

Much like energy. When everything is going rosy, relying on high % imports can be economically beneficial. In the case of extreme events like local or global wars, it leaves the country extremely fragile. Even outside wars, if there are drastic price increases in the global market then you are highly exposed. Look at OPEC, the power they wield and how they direct their efforts in essentially geo-political 'battles'.

I don't know much about it, but I suspect that energy and agricultural self-sufficiency are very important and underestimated factors in (developed) nation state security.

I don't think they're underestimated. Most rich countries have large subsidies to national farmers. In the US federal budget, Food & Agriculture is the largest slice right after the big ones (social security, healthcare, military, veterans).

Security of food supply is now also nationalism? Are we allowed to do anything in our self-interest anymore?

Food security is not nationalism.

But people actually campaigning for it...

People, who rarely get worked up about anything that doesn't put money in their pocket or stroke their ego, giving enough of a damn to go out and campaign for it... well, OP said it directly: he wasn't sure whether it was about putting money in their pocket, or stroking their ego.

Or, maybe they'd like a secure, trustworthy food supply.

What's strange about it? Most nations have such a policy goal, regardless of how merited (or not) it is.

I'm led to believe that JA (the agricultural coop) is one of the strongest lobbies in the country. The government had a lot of work cut out for them to sell TPP.

Clearly they've failed at achieving ”food security” if the local demand for potatoes has outstripped local supply.

The apparent bias against resorting to importation also seems to indicate it is largely thinly-veiled protectionism and political cultivation of special interests.

Furthermore however intuitive it may seem it runs contrary to hundreds of years of economic orthodoxy, known as Ricardo's Comparative Advantage.

It depends on what you mean by security. They may not be insulated from large-scale crop failures, but they are insulated from heavily-subsidized foreign companies dumping products on their market in a bid to undercut domestic prices and eliminate local producers as competitors.

As with most things, it comes down to a trade-off: increased risk of disruptions from ecological events in return for a decreased risk from geopolitical situations. One is not inherently better than the other, but Japan has a preference for self-sufficiency as much as possible.

> Clearly they've failed at achieving ”food security” if the local demand for potatoes has outstripped local supply.

How so? Food security is being able to feed the country even when it's completely isolated, not having potato chips on store shelves.

Farming in the US is heavily subsidized due to a nexus of national security, the farm lobby, and food stamps.

So it's a legitimate concern many nation's have, even EU countries have similar programs.

In the US it has gotten out of hand, however.

Without protectionist regulation Japanese farming isn't competitive.

> Without protectionist regulation Japanese farming isn't competitive.

Without protectionist regulation and subsidies European and American farming isn't competitive either.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6256274

Fair enough. I just meant to say that the point of the regulation isn't necessarily just the quality of the produce.

It may have little to do with policy-making and is surely anecdotal, but Japanese produce is far better and cheaper than what I used to get in America. (And the same is true of meat and baked goods.) The difference is plainly obvious. The idea that anything other than junk food would be worthy of importing from elsewhere is almost laughable to me. On the other hand, I don't buy corn or potatoes too often here.

As for better: some of it is and some of it isn't. Lettuce is definitely not better. As for price... not so much. Fruits are much more expensive in Japan.

From memory, U.S. potatoes have gone GM (genetically modified), IIRC. This may present a barrier -- I don't know WRT Japan.

(And if so, maybe one day will be thankful for those barriers and the genetic diversity they facilitate/protect.)

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