With Japanese food products becoming increasingly popular with foreign tourists, especially those from Asia, the country's agricultural sector has a bright future if it can change its policies to embrace technological innovation and entrepreneurship, an OECD report on the country's agricultural productivity and sustainability has concluded.
"Our advice to Japan is: 'You need to speed up the pace at which you move away from protection, invest more in sustainability, productivity, including research and development and other forms of innovation,' " said Ken Ash, director of trade and agriculture at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development in an interview with The Japan Times just prior to the report's release Saturday. And, he said, Japan must "prepare the agricultural sector for the unexpected shocks that are likely to become larger and more frequent with climate change."
"We're not ringing alarm bells. We're doing something at an earlier stage. We're saying that as the climate changes, governments need to get ahead of this and mitigate potential problems. Preventative actions will be cheaper and more effective than remedial actions. This is, fundamentally, the signal we're trying to send to Japan," Ash added.
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