Farm Ministers In South Korea, Japan And China Are Set To Boost Cooperation In Order To Guarantee Stable Food Supply

In the first meeting of farm ministers in over three years, South Korea, Japan and China came to a consensus to increase cooperation with one another in order to guarantee a stable food supply.

Japan Times reported on Sunday a joint statement from the three key food importers was made in the two-day meeting of farm ministers in Tokyo, which said, "We shared the view that sustainably increasing domestic production capacity is very important for our food security."

According to the three ministers it is "indispensable for our agricultural development to accelerate" the FTA talks while "considering various concerns and interests of each country." The FTA in the farming department was interrupted since April 2012 due to historical and territorial conflicts.

South Korea, Japan and China will hold a senior officials' meeting in order to further refine the measures specified in their joint statement and have agreed to have the next farm ministerial meeting in China.

Japan Today noted in their article on Monday the three countries have also agreed to a dynamic teamwork in order to avoid livestock-affecting infectious diseases, such as bird flu and foot-and-mouth disease, from entering their countries by conducting joint studies on migratory birds and movements of people.

With the direction on animal disease response as well as the formation of a working-level meeting, Japan's Agriculture minister Yoshimasa Hayashi acknowledges the meeting was highly productive. South Korea's Agriculture minister Lee Dong Phil, on the other hand, recognizes that the recent trilateral cooperation has been more substantial and definitive than the first meeting in April 2012, while China's Vice Farm Minister Chen Xiaohua said putting together the meeting itself was "extremely significant."

With regard to the banning on importing of Japanese agricultural and marine products brought about by the Fukushima nuclear crisis in 2011, Japan has called on South Korea and China to lift the regulation, but no progress on the effort has been reported yet.