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The Impact of Geographical Indications on the Power Relations between Producers and Agri-Food Corporations: A Case of Powdered Green Tea "Matcha"in Japan
... In order to avoid a criticism that the positive effects are not systematic, a quantitative survey would be conducted with stakeholders of different GI products to statistically and objectively measure both positive and negative effects and to generalize the conclusions. In fact, it is important to stress that the case study has to be considered in combination with the proposed overview of the effects of GIs inception in Japan, based on both official reports and academic studies, to get a fuller and more nuanced picture (Sekine and Bonanno 2017;Sekine 2019). Clearly, not all certified GIs in Japan contribute equally to SDGs, and it is important to consider also potentially negative contributions (to our knowledge, there is no important controversies or environmental issues in this case study). ...
Geographical indications (GIs) have recently become an important tool for Japanese agricultural policy, particularly after the adoption of a “sui generis” certification system in 2015. In the same year, the United Nations proposed a common agenda with 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The present paper addresses the potential of GIs to enhance SDGs in Japan. First, we examine existing knowledge on GI inception, which consists in both government reports and research surveys. We show that these studies mostly focus on SDGs related to economic growth, and on social issues raised by the registration process. Then, as an exploration of potential impacts of GIs on the full set of SDGs, we study the case of Mishima Bareisho Potato GI, on the basis of interviews and participatory observation. From local stakeholders’ point of view, Mishima potato GI can contribute to at least nine SDGs at all the production, transformation and commercialization stages. The SDG framework is useful to reveal some contributions seldomly considered in GI studies but which matter for local people, for example, the employment of disabled people or nutritional education. Finally, we discuss how these new insights can contribute to the debate on the potential role and limits of GIs for sustainable development in Japan.
... Cultural heritage(Miyake & Kohsaka, 2023).• Territorial heritage(Besky, 2014) • Capacity for relationship-building and interaction along the value chain (Power relations)(Sekine, 2019). • Dichotomous aspects in social policies(Filoche & Pinton, 2014). ...
The current context of agribusiness is framed by three major drivers: business models based on bioeconomy and circular economy; mechanisms that ensure quality, safety, and traceability throughout the supply chain; and aspects of the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement. The latter has become a differential factor for both comparative and competitive advantage and is recognized as a potential enabler or constraint for the positioning of primary, minimally processed, and transformed agricultural products. In the case of Ocañera red onion as a primary product, access to distinctive signs covered by the TRIPS agreement, such as denomination of origin or geographical indication, would benefit the promotion of its cultivation, protect trade against homologous varieties from neighboring countries introduced without restriction, and facilitate the promotion of characteristics related to its bioactive and functional components beyond organoleptic properties. For this research, a methodological design based on mixed methods of scientometrics, systematic literature review, and qualitative meta-analysis was implemented, aimed at identifying research trends in distinctive signs for primary agricultural products. From these trends and focusing on specific information about vegetables, enabling and restrictive factors related to distinctive signs were identified. These factors were used to analyze homologous cases of distinctive signs reported for primary agricultural products of the Allium genus. Finally, key factors were classified into five categories related to regulations, product added value characteristics, territory specificities, available technologies for origin and quality assessment, and market dynamics and merged in a five-step route to undertake a certification process for distinctive signs for Ocañera red onion.
... The conventionalization of organic farming has imposed small-scale family farmers to compete with large-scale business farms that propelled them to specialize on few crops, increase their farm size, or leave the sector (Guthman, 2004). The traditional agri-food products registered under the geographical indication systems are also under threat due to modernization and corporate domination (Sekine, 2018(Sekine, , 2019. When these alternative agrifood initiatives are molded in the context of Neoliberalism or the market economy, they are involved in the logics of higher competitiveness and cost containment, and eventually lose their original significance. ...
The Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems – established by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in 2002 – is a certification expected to conserve traditional agro-ecosystems and associated biodiversity, natural resources, outstanding landscapes, and cultural heritages that are at risk of extinction in the current market system. Employing the Nishi-Awa Steep Slope Land Agriculture System in Tokushima Prefecture, Japan, designated as Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System in 2018, as the case study, this research explores the potential and contradictions of Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System to incorporate alternative values such as traditional knowledge, biodiversity, landscape, healthy diets, and cultural heritages into the dominant hierarchy of values that favor market competitiveness. Based on original field surveys, literature review, and qualitative analyses, the study demonstrates that while the Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System certification is expected to bring considerable economic opportunity through an increase in international tourists and price appreciation of the local agri-food products certified by a local agri-food labeling system (established by the public and private actors in the designated area), this system does not explicitly guarantee the values claimed in Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System certification. Therefore, the Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System scheme to conserve the claimed values in designated areas is faced with a contradictory situation in a market economy.
Geographical Indication (GI) has been employed in Europe to promote well-known agri-food products, many with reputations going back hundreds of years, so there has been an assumption that the protection of such historical patrimony would materialize in countries adopting European-style GI policies. However, from a public policy view in many new GI countries, the primary goal for GI has more narrowly been the expansion of economic opportunities and exports. The question we raise in this paper concerns the extent to which the prioritization of economic growth encourages GI regulators to accept and even promote a historical territorial and production specifications that disadvantage or discourage the oldest and most traditional producers. This argument centers around three renowned producers in the historical Mikawa Region of Japan, which have struggled to realize the potential of GI or have become embroiled in legal disputes. We document how the GI authorities’ top-down implementation and utilitarian view of promoting production has clouded their ability to evaluate patrimony based upon historical merit, leading to unfavorable starting positions for famous products with hundreds of years of history.
Though GI systems can be significant institutional tools to link producers, territories, and agri-food products, their outcomes are conditioned by the way in which quality and code of practices are socially constructed. In some cases, powerful stakeholders have attempted to co-opt GIs and insert industrial logics and modern technology, which undermines the objectives of GI systems to protect producers who adopt traditional and local production methods. Employing the case of Hatcho Miso, this chapter aims to analyze Japan’s GI system and its first nation-wide controversy over the registration of a GI. This study is based on a field survey with semi-structured and open-ended interviews conducted from 2015 to 2024 among stakeholders as well as on literature review. It concluded that the case of Hatcho Miso shows that the alienation of traditional manufacturers is arising in the Japanese GI system, and that private territorial labeling such as Honbano Honmono has more potential to differentiate the quality and authenticity of agri-food products than the existing GI system in Japan.
Turismo de Base Comunitária (TBC) e as Indicações Geográficas (IGs) podem se destacar como estratégias importantes para o desenvolvimento socioambiental local. Contudo, o sucesso dessas iniciativas é influenciado pela eficácia das estruturas de governança e pelo envolvimento ativo das comunidades nas tomadas de decisão. Nesse sentido, esta pesquisa objetivou compreender como o TBC e as IGs podem reforçar a identidade cultural, preservar o meio ambiente gerando benefícios econômicos e sociais para as comunidades locais. Adotando uma abordagem qualitativa e pesquisa bibliográfica, este estudo categorizou os resultados em quatro dimensões temáticas: gestão e protagonismo das comunidades, desenvolvimento econômico e regional, sustentabilidade socioambiental, e apoio técnico e institucional. A integração dessas dimensões é vista como crucial para o desenvolvimento de estratégias que promovam tanto a sustentabilidade econômica quanto a resiliência cultural e social das comunidades envolvidas. A partir das lacunas aqui apontadas, futuras pesquisas são sugeridas buscando compreender como essas relações se manifestam nos territórios e sua contribuição para o desenvolvimento sustentável.
This study examines how quality is defined, re-defined and dynamically formulated amongst stakeholders under political and global market pressures while registering geographical indications (GIs) for non-edible non-timber forestry products (NTFPs)—namely, Iwate Charcoal and Joboji Urushi—in Japan. To that end, Convention Theory is used as a framework for the two NTFPs as traditionally applied to manufacturing or edible products. This study investigates the following related factors: 1) the transition of convention types between NTFPs and its impact on registrations and 2) the impact of the convention types and values on the sales and sustainable use of forest resources. The study applies Convention Theory, inter alia Worlds of Production (and associated categories) coined by Storper and Salais (1997), because of its central focus on the formation of product qualities and the resulting consumption and materialistic relations. Historically, both products have been under pressure because of lower-priced imports and the substitution of the traditional energy source charcoal and material source urushi with petroleum products including oil and chemical lacuquer, respectively. Thus, the two GI registrations of NTFPs in this study were an attempt, among other options, to counter the influx of imports that results from economies of scale and technological development in scientific standardization. We observed changes in the conventions and analyzed dynamism with relevant concepts of “orders of worth,” propounded by Boltanski and Thévenot (2006), behind the four categories of Possible Worlds of Production (Market, Industrial, Interpersonal, and Intellectual Resources) proposed by Storper and Salais (1997).
Our question is as follows, “Did the GI process related to quality strengthen the existing convention or did it rather cause confrontation between conventions?” The two NTFPs provide us with unique and contrasting pathways. Through the GI process, there were negotiations, not necessarily verbal discussions, but ceremony-like events, involving nonverbal communications and technical testing, at sites to assure members and reach agreements on quality. Moreover, there are certain challenges for NTFP GIs when compared with agricultural products; obviously, there is no taste element (as both are non-edible) and the associations with consumers are possibly weaker than those with foods are. Even among NTFP products, the methods of setting standards (to compete, or to differentiate themselves, as “dedicated” products from imports of “generic” products in the Industrial World) differed. Iwate Charcoal developed as an industrial commodity and set a stricter scientific standard. Alternatively, in establishing its standard, Joboji Urushi appealed to its historical embeddedness emphasizing differences in quality resulting from variations by individual producer, local environment, and season. Participation in negotiations of quality, thus, makes producers sensitive to the needs of certain customers, such as personalized products or relationships with producers. As both are forestry products, conservation efforts (identifying individual urushi trees and replanting and coppicing after harvesting for charcoal) are practiced, which loosely resonates with consumers’ sustainability discourses. Yet, rather than green and environmental discourses, subtle associations between a nostalgic sense of “homeland,” pride in artisanship and tradition are strong factors in the promotion of domestic urushi products vis-à-vis imported competition. The comparisons are more technical in the case of charcoal with a degree of carbonization. Noteworthy registrations of non-edible NTFPs are rare in Japan (and absent in the European system). However, the producers were able to learn from, and surmount, the challenges of GI product quality agreed upon, while they achieved a new sense of solidarity.
Geographical indications (GIs) have recently become an important tool for Japanese agricultural policy, particularly after the adoption of a “sui generis” certification system in 2015. In the same year, the United Nations proposed a common agenda with 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The present paper addresses the potential of GIs to enhance SDGs in Japan. First, we examine existing knowledge on GI inception, which consists in both government reports and research surveys. We show that these studies mostly focus on SDGs related to economic growth, and on social issues raised by the registration process. Then, as an exploration of potential impacts of GIs on the full set of SDGs, we study the case of Mishima Bareisho Potato GI, on the basis of interviews and participatory observation. From local stakeholders’ point of view, Mishima Potato GI can contribute to at least nine SDGs at all the production, transformation and commercialization stages. The SDG framework is useful to reveal some contributions seldomly considered in GI studies but which matter for local people, for example, the employment of disabled people or nutritional education. Finally, we discuss how these new insights can contribute to the debate on the potential role and limits of GIs for sustainable development in Japan.
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