Quotes of the Day

Yuk Gwang Ki kneels in the yellow stubble of his newly harvested rice field and lovingly picks up a stray stalk of rice. Every day since he was a young boy, Yuk, now 53, has come to this paddy in Jangsu province, South Korea, to plant, to tend the fragile seedlings and to bring in the crops. Yuk's family has tilled this tiny plot for 400 years, and while it's increasingly difficult to earn a living from the land, Yuk would be happy knowing his family could go on with the work for 400 more. "The purpose of farming is not to make money," he explains. "It is to preserve the Korean way of life."

Is a farm a business, or is it a museum for maintaining a dying lifestyle? That philosophical question may sound odd, but it goes to the heart of the acrimonious debate over agricultural subsidies. From France to South Korea, the government handouts and trade protection that developed countries offer their farmers to protect them against cheap imported food continue to stymie global efforts to open markets to less-fettered trade.

The debate can be confounding because, as Yuk suggests, it isn't just about dollars. Farming is deeply rooted in ancient traditions and national psyches. The idea that indigenous farmers must be defended is a powerful one, because it is linked to ideals such as national self-sufficiency in food production, and even national identity. Two years ago, at WTO talks held in Cancún, Mexico, one of Yuk's neighbors, Lee Kyung Hae, died after stabbing himself in the heart to protest the loss of protection for South Korean farmers and the opening of the rice market. That level of passion isn't hard to understand. Chizuru Kamiki, director and food analyst at the Japan Food Culture and Environmental Research Institute in Kobe, says, "Rice defines who we are."

Japan and Korea are prime examples of highly industrialized nations trying to hold onto an identity that is rooted in an agrarian past. The two countries maintain some of the highest barriers to an imported food staple in the world. South Korea maintains a strict quota that limits rice imports to just 4% of the country's total annual consumption. About 7% of Japanese consumption is accounted for by imported rice, but hardly any of it actually reaches supermarkets. Much of it is stuffed into government surplus warehouses or passed on to other countries as food aid. Foreign rice that does reach store shelves is made so expensive by tariffs that it poses no threat to domestic rice—which is also pricey, because the average Japanese farm is small and production costs are high. Japanese consumers pay as much as 10 times more for their rice than Americans, according to Eric Wailes, a professor of agricultural economics at the University of Arkansas. If Japan allowed rice to be imported freely, Wailes estimates that the price of imported rice would fall by around 40%.

But ending tariffs and subsidies is a hard sell, not only because farmers represent a powerful voting and lobbying bloc, but also because of the high-profile role that rice plays in Asian cultures. The word for rice—gohan in Japanese and bap in Korean—is often used as a synonym for "meal." In Japan, schoolchildren are taught that Japanese civilization began with the introduction of rice farming. Most Japanese festivals revolve around rice and the rice harvest. South Korean families use rice cakes and rice wine as offerings in traditional Confucian ceremonies to honor their ancestors. Many local superstitions are based on the misuse of rice. "If you step on rice, your feet will be twisted," one warns; "If you spill rice while rinsing it, you will have a miscarriage," predicts another.

More convincingly, some agricultural officials in Tokyo caution that the countryside must be protected from development to maintain the aesthetic appeal of the shimmering paddies. The land would be ravaged by typhoons without well-tended rice fields, which act as sponges during heavy rains and are a buffer against erosion, according to farmers. "The rice paddies prevent floods and landslides and maintain the Japanese landscape," says Masahiro Konno, general manager at the WTO office of Japan's Central Union of Agricultural Co-operatives. "A destruction of the rice farm will destroy agriculture in Japan."

Japanese and South Koreans also worry about becoming dependent on imported rice. The concern is especially acute in South Korea, which suffered from widespread hunger as recently as the 1960s. In 1993, Japan was forced to import large quantities of rice when its harvest failed due to unusually cold weather. But many Japanese refused to buy it because of reports of dead rats in sacks of foreign rice and televised taste tests in which participants deemed the strange grains inedible. So shoppers stood in long lines or turned to the black market to buy local rice at outrageous prices instead of cheaper imports. "We see no positive effects of increasing foreign rice imports," says Tomochika Motomura, an official at the general food policy bureau of Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.

Yet efforts to preserve rice farming in Japan and South Korea may ultimately fail, not because of foreign competition, but because of long-term demographic changes. Over the past 30 years, millions of Korean farmers have traded their hoes and their backbreaking lifestyle for comfy, higher-paid jobs in the cities. The importance of rice in the Japanese or Korean diet is also on the wane as youngsters eat more Western-style foods. The amount of rice consumed by the average Korean has fallen 24% over the past 10 years alone, according to Korean government figures. "For the younger population, cooking rice is just too much of a hassle," says Kamiki, the Japanese food culture analyst. What's more, rice farmers are literally dying out. In Japan, 80% of them are more than 60 years old, while half of South Korea's rice farmers are past that age. After they stop working, their paddies are rented to other farmers or simply abandoned.

Yuk, the South Korean rice farmer, isn't ready to call it quits. In December, he plans to join 2,000 other Korean farmers in a mass protest against trade liberalization at the WTO ministerial meetings in Hong Kong. The farmers plan to beat traditional two-sided Korean drums and chant slogans against free trade. But even Yuk wonders if the cause is futile. In March, the South Korean government cut the subsidized price it pays farmers for their rice as part of an effort to prepare them for increased competition when the market opens. That sliced Yuk's revenue by about 20%. He sells heating equipment on the side to make ends meet. After he retires, Yuk realizes his farm will likely close up altogether. His daughter is studying art and his son architecture. Neither wants to take over the family paddy. "I don't want to force them," Yuk says. "There's no future in becoming a farmer." In South Korea, he may well be right.

• Michael Schuman
• By subsidizing their farmers, governments are trying to preserve a way of life