‘The New Wheat Policy’ and Domestic Supply and Demand of Wheat

The aim of this paper is to make clear the characteristics of ‘The new wheat policy\u27 which is a part of policies under ‘The Basic Law on Food，Agriculture and Rural Areas\u27 by comparing with wheat policy in recent years，and to examine its influences to wheat production in Japan from now on.In recent years，Japanese Wheat policy has maintained the framework of indirect state control that involves government unlimited buying，but it has lowered the wheat producers\u27 price by introducing market mechanism to the government-bought price. As a result of that，the domestic production hasdropped and import has increased.‘The new wheat policy\u27 attributes the causes of reduction of domestic wheat production to‘mismatch between demand and production\u27 which is said to be from indirect state control，and to solve the mismatch，it advocates abolition of government unlimited buying and introduction of private distribution. It makes the market mechanism stronger in making wheat producers\u27 price.The Government says that \u27The new wheat policy\u27 will enable to produce wheats which are strongly demanded and therefore the domestic production will increase. But its framework has characteristics which will lower wheat producers\u27 price still more. Under this，the domestic production will drop and import will increase all the more， although the mismatch will be rather solved.To increase the domestic wheat production， the effective measures of boundary adjustment and the effective price support policy are required