President Trump and Prime Minister Abe met on August 25 to discuss trade relations between their respective countries. The two reached a $7 billion deal on agricultural and digital goods. Under the new deal, to be officially ratified sometime in September, Abe confirmed the private sector’s purchase of 2.7 million tons of corn.
Yes, corn. You can make bad corn jokes all you want, but what does this really mean for Japan?
Corn isn’t really the first staple that comes to mind when you think of Japan. So naturally many people are asking, “What is Japan going to do with all this corn?”
Turns out that the corn is a specific type called dent corn, used for livestock feed, bio-fuel, and oils. Abe purportedly purchased this dent corn in response to an outbreak of Spodoptera frugiperda (ツマジロクサヨトウ; fall armyworm) that’s been damaging crops in the Kyushu region since July. The corn is expected to alleviate the loss due to the larvae infestation.
Yet many are questioning whether the crop damage has been unnecessarily hyped up as a hoax. Even former Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio (鳩山元首相) tweeted his suspicions on the true extent of the pest damage. The Ministry of Agriculture, Foresty and Fisheries (農水省; のうすいしょう) has confirmed that the pest damage has had little to no impact on farming activities – certainly not enough to warrant a large purchase of US corn.
“Food loss” journalist and nutrition expert Ide Rumi pointed out how little corn is consumed in Japan — less than one-twentieth of what the US consumes. She also mentioned that some US corn products are genetically modified — something Japan looks down on. Is this feed even safe for livestock and possibly human consumption?
It could very well be that Abe was forced to concede to purchasing the corn. Trade relations between the US and China right now are unstable, to put it mildly. Trump needed a country to dump his corn exports in, and Japan naturally came to mind. While this is a win for American farmers, it remains to be seen how the corn will affect Japan’s agricultural sector.
