Political shifts toward family farming and agroecology in Japan? The impact of United Nations campaigns

In recent decades, several United Nations (UN) organizations have made efforts to change global agri-food policies from a model promoting corporate industrial farming to one advocating agroecological family farming. This shift has garnered support from some of the UN’s most active member countries, farmer organizations, civil society, and academia. However, not all UN member countries have adopted agroecological family farming homogeneously or simultaneously. Many nations and transnational corporations have sought to counter these campaigns to further their own interests, as was evident at the UN Food System Summit held in 2021. By focusing on the case of Japan, the fourth largest economy in the world with over one million farms, and employing a political economy approach, this study analyzes the impact of the UN’s campaigns on family farming and agroecology on agri-food policies, stakeholders’ behaviors, and discourses in the country. It also examines the measures taken by the Japanese government to curb these campaigns, in favor of preserving conventional models both domestically and internationally. Our analysis is based on literature, public documents, statistics, and participant observations conducted from 2014 to 2023. The findings reveal that, despite the majority of Japanese farms being family farms, the government has promoted corporate farming and highly mechanized operations with new technologies. However, the launch of the UN Decade of Family Farming in 2019 has gradually gained recognition and influenced discourses and behaviors among stakeholders. Simultaneously, the government’s new agri-food policies and its active role in shaping the summit and international rulemaking have impacted these international campaigns.