Framing multifunctionality: agricultural policy paradigm change in south korea and japan?

the aftermath of the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture (URAA) and the bsequent establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO), South Korea after Korea) and Japan face some of the most serious agricultural policy adjustment problems of all WTO signatories. Attempts during the last three or four decades to maintain politically acceptable farm income levels within their minifarm structures of agriculture relied upon a combination of protectionist domestic price support, import control, and high tariff policy measures. These policies must be gradually dismantled under the agricultural reform “disciplines” stipulated in the URAA (Nelson, et al. 2001). Ongoing challenges faced by both countries in meeting reform targets are evident in their present ranking among the most protectionist OECD countries in terms of Producer Support Estimates (PSE) used by the OECD in its periodic agricultural policy reviews (see Table 1 below; OECD 2004). I During the course of the URAA negotiations, Korea and Japan, along with the EU and other European countries, insisted that Non-Trade Concerns (NTCs), such as food security and rural socioeconomic stability, be recognized as legitimate rural/agricultural sector policy objectives (Normile and Bohman 2002). The subsequent inclusion of a NTC provision in the URAA accords has provided the impetus for the development of a new multifunctionality (hereafter MF) policy paradigm, codified in such OECD publications as Multifunctionality: Toward An Analytical Framework (2001). In this new paradigm, policy attention is directed to a range of valuable public goods that are co-produced as by-products of agricultural production, but that are not presently marketised in ways that reward producers for their provision. Examples of such by-products, in addition to aforementioned NTC food security and rural socioeconomic stability concerns, include environmental service, aesthetic landscape maintenance, and cultural heritage preservation social amenities. MF proponents argue that such valuable positive externalities of agricultural production may be threatened in regions where agricultural trade liberalization measures jeopardize the survival of the farm sector and surrounding rural communities. Policymakers in Korea and Japan have found MF ideas inviting rationales for continued support of their domestic agricultures in a changing global agricultural