March 2
Ambassador Roos Announces the Launch of the "Partners in Agriculture" Program
On March 2, Ambassador Roos launched an exciting series of events entitled "Partners in Agriculture." It is an unprecedented program put together by U.S. Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service Japan (USDA/FAS Japan), various States including Iowa, Nebraska, the Prefecture of Yamanashi and several U.S. agricultural trade organizations, scheduled for March through mid-summer 2010.
"Partnership" is the word that best describes the agricultural relationship between the United States and Japan. Our agricultural partnership can be traced back 50 years to the famous "hog lift" of 1959. After Yamanashi prefecture was devastated by two typhoons, farmers from the State of Iowa assisted Yamanashi farmers in rebuilding the Japanese hog industry by donating and transferring hogs to repopulate the prefecture. Since that time the livestock industry in Japan has developed alongside the Japanese economy, reflecting the evolving tastes and growing purchasing power of the Japanese consumer.
The desire for a true agricultural partnership was also the motivation in 1951 when the U.S. Embassy worked with Japanese Ministry of Agriculture to help establish the U.S. program for the Association for International Collaboration of Farmers (AICF, now JAEC: Japan Agricultural Exchange Council), whose mission is to help Japanese farmers learn about agricultural techniques in the United States, encourage democracy in Japan, and bolster a mutual understanding between the two countries through a one-year farm stay program. Since 1952, over 12,000 young Japanese farmers have gone to the United States, and returned to Japan with new farming ideas, and new business contacts.
Today, the U.S.-Japan agricultural partnership is dynamic and robust. The U.S. is firmly established as the most reliable foreign supplier of high-quality agricultural products to Japan. Similarly, Japan's purchases have been essential contributors to the health of the U.S. economy. In 2008 Japan purchased approximately $14.7 billion worth of grains, oilseeds, meats, dairy, and other food products from the United States, making Japan our third largest agricultural export market. In fact, Japan is the U.S.'s largest overseas market for feed grains, pork, wheat, and potatoes.
Japan's food security stands upon two pillars; domestic production, and a reliable supply of imports. For that reason, the agricultural partnership between Japan and the United States epitomizes how each country can benefit from exchange of goods, technology, and most importantly trust.
The "Partners in Agriculture" program celebrates this mutually invaluable relationship between the United States and Japan and showcases how the two world's leading economies can work together to further prosper, based on the very foundation of human life, food and agriculture.
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Press Contact:
Midori Iijima, Office of Agricultural Affairs, U.S. Embassy, Tokyo
Ph. 81-3-3224-5096 / Fax. 81-3-3589-0793 / E-mail:midori.iijima@fas.usda.gov