The governor of Miyagi Prefecture, one of the disaster-hit areas, has promoted a change in Japan’s fishing and aquaculture rights system for the inshore fishery as a way to promote investment for recovery. These rights used to be preferentially granted to local fishery cooperatives, locally based companies, and JVs of local coops with private companies.
On 27 October, Yoshihiro Murai won his third term as governor of Miyagi Prefecture — the first election he faced since the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami — by stressing his accomplishments in reconstruction of disaster areas through the creation of special economic zones. Within special zones, private companies can acquire fishing rights on the same footing as local cooperatives.
As an emergency measure, the Miyagi prefectural government in October 2011 designated Marine Produce Industry Special Zones for Reconstruction within which businesses could acquire fishing rights. This was a drastic departure from Japan’s Fisheries Act, under which coastal fishing rights are to be granted with priority to local fishing cooperatives. Under that rule, fishing cooperatives could effectively veto entry of new enterprises into coastal aquaculture.
Some conditions apply in the special zones: Seven or more local fishermen are to be either employees or shareholders of the enterprise, or more than 70 percent of the local fishing households are to be either employees or shareholders of the enterprise. If both a fishing cooperative and an eligible enterprise apply for aquaculture rights, the governor will decide which should get the rights by considering which will better contribute to restoration.
So far, one new company, an oyster-farming venture, has been granted fishery rights under this emergency exemption.
Momonoura Kaki Seisansha Godo Kaisha, a venture between Sendai-based Sendaisuisan Corporation and oyster fishermen in the Momonoura district of Ishinomaki City, was founded in August of 2012, but began its operations in earnest in October of this year with investments in an aquaculture facility, fishing boats and construction of a processing plant. It will sell directly to major supermarket chains and other buyers without brokering by the prefectural fisheries cooperative. The company’s business model is to integrate production, processing and sales.
Murai’s intention in promoting the special zones was to attract investment for rapid re-construction of the disaster area. Due to the extreme loss of vessels and facilities, rapid new investment is urgently needed. However, as many of the local fishermen were killed or are aged, and both they and their fishery cooperatives suffered severe financial losses by the disaster, it was doubtful that they could make the required investments to revive the local industry. The change was expected to prompt new investment and to create job opportunities for young people.
Representatives of the Miyagi Federation of Fisheries Cooperative Associations submitted to the governor a petition with 14,000 signatures opposing the plan. They worry that fishermen will become mere employees of large corporations, rather than independent operators. “This tramples on fishermen’s dignity and pride as professionals,” they claimed in their petition.
They also claim that a profit-driven private corporation is more likely to close down if profits do not come in as quickly as expected, and that their own access to resources will be affected by the establishment of new aquaculture facilities.
On a nationwide scale, there is pressure from business associations to amend the fisheries act to open the sector to private investment and ownership, and the special zones may be seen as a pilot program presaging further erosion of local control.
The Japan Economic Research Institute, a business federation-funded think tank, has published proposals for fishery reform (in 2007 and again after the disaster) that call for participation of private companies in the local fishing industry and promotion of the market principle. The governor’s plan is similar to these proposals. The think tank is specifically pushing for increased competitiveness through vertical integration of production, processing and distribution. They propose to abolish any impediments for entry into aquaculture and set-net fishery, and introduce the Individual Transferable Quota (ITQ) system.
This comes as the U.S. is privatizing its own ocean resources through introduction of “catch share” programs such individual fishing quotas (IFQ), first implemented in 1990 in the Mid-Atlantic Surf Clam and Ocean Quahog Fishery. Official NOAA policy encourages catch share management schemes.
