Revitalization of Less Favored Area & Environmental Resource Conservation under the Import Liberalization

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Japan has accepted the minimum access import of rice at the final agreement of GATT Uruguay Round instead of tariffication. It is shown that trade liberalization is considered to be reasonable in terms of optimal resource allocation but not always best policy in terms of resource environmental issues.Recently the accumulation of nitrogen and phosphorus through food trade has been argued in the food importing countries such as Netherlands and Japan. Also the safety of imported food has been controversial matters. In these points, the effects of food trade Iiberalization has to be evaluated from the multidimensional point of view.The negative effects of trade liberalization has tended to be concentrated in certain areas. As the policy to mitigate these effects, farm income support has become less and less acceptable internationally. In the EU,the de-coupling policy has been adopted. Japan had better to adopt these revised de-coupling policies adjusted to Japanese situation for the farm income support measures.As the revitalization policy in less favored aresas, it is not sufficient to promote the agriculture alone. It is more important to create job opportunity by promoting the secondary and tertially industry such as local resources processing firms, especially agribusiness industry and education industries etc.Moreover, the regional promotion through subsidies to external beneficial effects of agriculture will be more and more important in near future.