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The Great Japan Potato-Chip Crisis

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Re: The Great Japan Potato-Chip Crisis

#131

Post by Pitarou »

lithos wrote: post #107
Pitarou wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It‘s not as simple as that. Japan‘s agricultural system was intended to be a temporary prop, to help agriculture recover after the War. The people would experience inflated prices and erratic supplies, but that was thought a price worth paying. The system has been kept in place for decades longer than its stated purpose required. The forces that keep it in place are powerful, and democratic only in the loosest sense…

Are you suggesting people to vote against their interest? That doesn't sound very democratic.

I‘m not sure what you mean by that.

In Japan, a farmer’s vote has roughly twice the weight of an urbanite’s.

Re: The Great Japan Potato-Chip Crisis

#132

Post by Pitarou »

mikekchar wrote: post #64
Pitarou wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It‘s not as simple as that. Japan‘s agricultural system was intended to be a temporary prop, to help agriculture recover after the War. The people would experience inflated prices and erratic supplies, but that was thought a price worth paying. The system has been kept in place for decades longer than its stated purpose required. The forces that keep it in place are powerful, and democratic only in the loosest sense…

But nothing in Japan is really ever temporary. Once it's in place, it takes something pretty major to move it out of place. And for the record, I don't think it was ever intended to be a temporary measure. The whole reason a million people died of hunger after WWII was because there was no local production of food. And not only that, there was no centralised food distribution system, so even when food became availabl…

> Nobody that I know of complains about about the agricultural system here (granted, I live in a farming community :-) ).

I did (granted, I have a background in Economics).

Tell a Japanese how much a tin of tomatoes costs in Japan compared to the US or the EU, or a mango, or even a packet of generic acetaminophen (paracetamol) for that matter.

Now ask them why. Nine times out of ten, they’ll say something about the Japanese culture of quality and attention to detail. To be fair, Japan often does demand higher standards, but that’s not nearly enough to explain the full price discrepancy.

They don‘t complain because they don‘t know what’s going on.

Re: The Great Japan Potato-Chip Crisis

#133

Post by pgnas »

Looking at the dictionary definition of "crisis" I would not call this a "time of intense difficulty or threat of danger or a time when "important decisions must be made"unless the that decision.

There are plenty of real crisis around the world, right? The Japanese should be more concerned about how a certain area ahem Fukushima, is still killing our ocean.

That is a crisis.

Re: The Great Japan Potato-Chip Crisis

#134

Post by Pitarou »

emodendroket wrote: post #65
Pitarou wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this more to your liking then: Japan is peculiarly vulnerable to potato shortages because it restricts imports, even when its own potato crop fails.

Ok, sure. But there is currently a shortage of lettuce going on in the supermarkets here despite a liberalized trade regime. It's not a panacea.

Not for lettuce, no. It has a short shelf life and doesn’t travel well.

Re: The Great Japan Potato-Chip Crisis

#135

Post by coldtea »

iopq wrote: post #42
coldtea wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Life on an island with a historically strict protectionist food policy. There is no potato shortage, per se (per the article, I'm surely no expert). There's a shortage of potatoes from Hokkaido, and domestic consumers aren't prepared for (or allowed to) buy them from an international market. Yeah, if only they gave up their autonomy and local agriculture to have more access to chips from abroad.

Why is local agriculture more important than local customers?

Because being self-sufficient and having a good import/exports sheets makes you more resilient in the mid- and long-run that having all the chips that local customers demand.

You can always allow for more chips whenever you really want. Reversing a damaged trade deficit or self-sustainability? Not so much, and not anywhere near as fast.

Re: The Great Japan Potato-Chip Crisis

#136

Post by fulafel »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #41
coldtea wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Life on an island with a historically strict protectionist food policy. There is no potato shortage, per se (per the article, I'm surely no expert). There's a shortage of potatoes from Hokkaido, and domestic consumers aren't prepared for (or allowed to) buy them from an international market. Yeah, if only they gave up their autonomy and local agriculture to have more access to chips from abroad.

It's not just chips. Japan's generally protectionist/sheltering attitude towards businesses makes their whole economy structurally inefficient. Japan's nominal GDP per capita is like 40% lower than the US these days.

There is more to life than GDP per capita.

Re: The Great Japan Potato-Chip Crisis

#137

Post by Arizhel »

emodendroket wrote: post #128
Arizhel wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As nradov said above, "Famines are caused by bad governments, failed states, and violent conflicts. Not because there isn't enough food." Obviously, the Irish Potato Famine was caused by bad government. Instead of being allowed to keep their own potatoes, the government of occupied Ireland, run by Britain, forced them to export them all.

That's not quite right. Large holders wanted to sell the food for more money. It wasn't a matter of government agents marching in an commandeering the fields.

That's still an example of bad government. It's the government's job to act in the best interests of the nation and the citizens, even if that means going against the wishes of the rich elite.

Re: The Great Japan Potato-Chip Crisis

#138

Post by qubex »

hkmurakami wrote: post #24
yladiz wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 spec…

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)

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.

Re: The Great Japan Potato-Chip Crisis

#139

Post by mywittyname »

qubex wrote: post #138
hkmurakami wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

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 Advanta…

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.

Re: The Great Japan Potato-Chip Crisis

#140

Post by emodendroket »

iopq wrote: post #129
emodendroket wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that is what is, in my opinion, obviously wrong. Go on a drive in any town in America and tell me there aren't a lot of Japanese products being sold here.

Which are much more expensive than American goods, which is what I'm saying is bad. If there isn't an extremely good trade deal between the two countries, then the tariffs will be high. Japan doesn't WANT a lot of American stuff, so they have no incentive to give a really good deal to American manufacturers. http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/10/trump-and-abe-us-may-struggle... indeed, it seems it's hard to get a good trade…

A Mazda is much more expensive than a comparable Ford?
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