Word: rice
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...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...