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China and India have rapidly increased imports of palm oil, and of soybean in case of China, since the mid-1990s. Likewise, they have become the world's leading producers of poultry, eggs, pork or dairy products over the same period. It is commonly suggested that these rapid increase, and the concurrent change in diet and rise in diet-related publi...
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... Japanese and Taiwanese instant noodle companies actively invested into China since the 1980s, and facilitated China's instant noodle industry to develop from almost zero into the world largest producer, producing 8.28mt in 2011. The production process include deep-fry, and this rapid development of the instant noodle industry is suggested to be a factor of promoting China to be the world largest importer of vegetable oil (Hiraga 2012). Taiwanese company of Tingyi (though registered in Cayman Islands) began producing instant noodle in China in 1992. ...
... Large, modern crushing facilities were built mostly in the Southern coast of China, to be convenient to handle imported soybean. Until then, smaller crushing facilities had been historically located in the Northeast part of China, close to domestic soybean production area (Hiraga 2012). In the background, the Chinese state shifted its policy to facilitate import increase of soybean in the years proceeding its accession to the WTO; like reducing import tariffs of soybean from 40% to 3% in 1996 and increasing VAT on soy meal to 13% in 1999, to favour importing whole soybeans and crush the beans in China rather than importing soy meal. ...
The global vegetable oil complex is a major driver behind agro-extractivism for oil crops namely soybean and palm oil while facilitating demand increase flexibly in food, feed, and fuel market. Although existing literature focuses more on feed and environmental aspect, more vegetable oil is produced and consumed in Asia, more for food industries rather than biofuel. For example, as China transformed from almost self-sufficient with vegetable oils in the 1980s into current top importer of soybean and palm oil, it also became the world largest producer of instant noodle (most of them deep fried) thanks to Japanese and Taiwanese incoming investment, amid of deregulation and trade liberalisation.
In order to reveal the structure and characteristics of the global vegetable oil complex with Japanese example, this paper first outlines the expansion of Japanese instant noodle industry now to India and even to Africa, together with her oil-industry and sogo-shosha investing in BRICS countries, even when Japanese vegetable oil demand has plateaued and soybean import has decreased. Second, the paper studies how Japanese sogo-shosha and oil-related industries developed as a part of the global complex in the Food Regime frameworks, hoping Japan’s development trajectory can provide a better understanding of current structure in other developing countries which facilitates demand increase for vegetable oil and agro-extractivism for oil-crops around the BRICS countries.
Before and during the world wars, many of Japanese sogo-shosha, namely Mitsui&Co. and Mitsubishi Corporation, established with strong governmental support in the effort to capitalistic development of modern Japan, and they worked for the imperial state to expand colonial occupation in Asian countries. Japanese vegetable oil companies, the origins of today’s dominant oil-industry, also developed in this effort as they transformed Manchuria soybean into a global commodity around the 1890s to 1930s in the First Food Regime. Sogo-shosha and oil-industry collaborated with the state especially during wars when military demand for oils and fats was critical. Then after WW2, this strongly established vegetable oil complex shifted their main market into industrial mass diet in the Second Food Regime, when more or less same players became the Japanese counterparts to receive US grains, as they processed wheat and oil crops in factories built on coast area and facilitated the development of particular Japanese food industry based on these imported grains, including instant noodle. Today, many of these Japanese food companies became transnational, and they have expanded overseas together with sogo-shosha in the Global Corporate Food Regime.
In conclusion, the paper suggests that once this structure is established to provision industrial mass diet based on global grains and oil crops, it shall be rather easy to continue accumulate capital while sourcing raw materials from shifting producing countries, like Japan has developed its soybean crushing industries while extracting resource for soybean from Manchuria to USA to Brazil, and now to Mozambique. The similar structure can be found in other countries as they are sucked into the global vegetable oil complex and become the extracting forces for oil crops around the BRICS countries. (498 words)
[keywords] food regime, vegetable oil, soybean, palm oil, sogo-shosha
