anthropology response paper

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KOICHI KATO

THE CURRENT SEIKATSU CLUB AS WE APPROACH THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF OUR FOUNDING

◆◆ INTRODUCTION

Seikatsu Club, born as a buying club in a corner of Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward in 1965, converted to a consumers’ co-operative three years later, in 1968. We are now approaching the 50th anniversary of our founding next year. In this report, I would like to inform you about the current situation in the Seikatsu Club.

The Seikatsu Club Consumers’ Co-operative Union (SCCCU), centering on the Tokyo metropolitan area, has organizations (32 local Seikatsu Club consumer co-operatives) in Tokyo, Hokkaido, Osaka, Kyoto and 17 other prefectures from Hokkaido in the north to the Kansai region in the south. The total number of Seikatsu Club members is just over 370,000, the total value of consumer materials supplied in FY2015 was just under 85 billion yen, and the total sum of members’ shares was a little less than 40 billion yen. The average monthly amounts spent by members have declined considerably, but at around 20,500 yen is still around twice that of the average consumers’ co-operative in Japan.

We also have several associated companies, which form the production sector for our dairy products, eggs, meat and so on, and a transport company that handles distribution to our groups. A total of 1,300 staff and employees work in the Seikatsu Clubs and associated companies. The group also includes workers’ collectives (workers’ co-operatives), a movement to build workplaces, some of which are collectives that perform the administrative work for Seikatsu Clubs. If we include our comrades in these workers’ collectives, the total number of people employed in the Seikatsu Clubs is something over 2,000.

Even today, the fundamental focus of our business and movement is the collective purchase of food. However, the current Seikatsu Club, in addition to this first line of business, has expanded to our second line of business, SCCCUMA, and, as I shall mention later, to our third and fourth lines, our welfare programs and our electrical power business. Please note that the value of sales by the associated companies and the second to fourth business lines are not included in the total value of consumer materials supplied that is mentioned above. I should also add that the Seikatsu Club Consumers’

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Co-operative Union (SCCCU) was founded in 1990 and the Seikatsu Club Consumers’ Co-operative Union of Mutual Aid (SCCCUMA) was established in 2009.

◆◆ 1. OUR CURRENT BUSINESS AND MOVEMENT STRATEGY

—BUILDING AN FEC SELF-SUFFICIENT ZONES NETWORK

The United Nations declared 2012 to be the International Year of Co-operatives (IYC), and during that year co-operatives throughout Japan, not only consumers’ co-operatives but also agricultural co-operatives and fishing co-operatives, gathered to form a national executive committee for the IYC. The Japanese Consumers’ Co-operative Union (JCCU) naturally participated as a member of the executive committee. Seikatsu Club also participated, I myself having the honor to serve as a committee member.

The economic critic Mr. Katsuto Uchihashi was chosen as the representative of the executive committee. Mr. Uchihashi has for many years made appeals for the values of coexistence and cooperation, and as one part of this has proposed the movement strategy of the creation of FEC self-sufficient zones. As representative, Mr. Uchihashi called on co-operatives nationwide to make this FEC self-sufficient zones concept the mission of co-operatives. SCCCU, based on the performance of our business and movement, and as a response to Mr. Uchihashi’s appeal, decided to uphold the further development of our “FEC Self-sufficient Zones Network” as the main policy of our Mid-term Five-year Plan that began in FY 2015. We are currently in the process of pushing forward with each of the efforts included in the network.

Although it may seem superfluous, I will clarify the meaning of “FEC” here. The name derives from the initial letters of the three English words Food, Energy and Care. Mr. Uchihashi has stated that it is precisely the creation of these “FEC” self-sufficient zones that is the mission that should be carried forward by co-operatives. For the Seikatsu Club, this proposal expresses exactly our reason for existence. Below, I will base this report on the current state of SCCCU by describing the advances being made in our “FEC Self-sufficient Zones Network.”

◆◆ 2. SEIKATSU CLUB PRINCIPLES AND GM FOOD

Even today, we are sticking to our Seikatsu Club term consumer materials instead of

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using the expression commodities for the goods we provide. The number of individual consumer materials that our members purchase collectively is now quite large, but since each one of these has been produced through dialog between the members and producers, this represents a wide range of issues related to food self-sufficiency and safety that need to be pursued, including the reduction of harmful substances, the sustainable use of natural resources, reuse of bottles and the reduction of waste, energy conservation, risk avoidance, and information disclosure. These are our Seikatsu Club principles, and even now we do not wish to use the term commodities for the materials that are produced as a result.

The outcome of this long succession of efforts is that we can be proud that our achievements in approaching the ideals expressed in our principles are in no way inferior to any other co-operative in Japan. In this report, I would like to discuss the issue of GM food and our partnership with Yuza Town, Seikatsu Club’s largest rice-producing partner, which can be described as a direct producer-consumer partnership in terms of both area and diversification.

It was in 1996 that the then Ministry of Health and Welfare approved the distribution of GM food in Japan. Until that time, food issues had focused on food additives and pesticides, but in that year there was a veritable eruption of issues. BSE (so-called mad cow disease), pathogenic E-Coli O-157, endocrine disruptors and others brought about a huge qualitative change in food issues. I assess this as an advance in the complication, intensification and globalization of food issues, but the issue at the top of the list was GMOs. Exactly what the issue is about is still hotly contested, but for the Seikatsu Club it is firstly about health impacts and environmental impacts (the pollution of seeds and so on) and then it concerns the control of seeds by mammoth multinational corporations such as Monsanto. We suddenly felt a grave sense of danger.

At the Moscow Congress of the International Co-operative Alliance in 1980, Dr. Alex Laidlaw presented a report titled “Co-operatives in the Year 2000.” In the report, Dr. Laidlaw emphasized the declaration of war against adulterated food of the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers established in the UK in 1844. He then questioned how the consumers’ co-operatives of the day were doing, whipping up the audience by asking, “What are we doing to eliminate 20th-century style adulteration?” He concluded by insisting that co-operatives must oppose the increasing power of huge multinational corporations that are strengthening their control over the world economy.

Seikatsu Club recognizes the GMO issue as precisely symbolic of this kind of problem, and with the precautionary principle firmly in mind, Seikatsu Club has worked

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as hard as possible through a long succession of efforts to oppose and to protect ourselves from the issues connected with GMOs.

The fundamental principle when carrying through this opposition and protection is to eliminate (as far as possible) GMOs from the raw materials used to produce our consumer materials. Since this has meant dealing with corn and soybeans, we have been engaged in a long, hard struggle. Just these two agricultural products have extremely wide-ranging impacts on food, sometimes being the main constituent, or a secondary ingredient, or right down to trace additives.

One further fundamental principle is information disclosure. We have clarified, through painstaking tracking, whether an individual consumer material contains GMOs or not, and if it does, what level of GMOs are contained in the food. The information issue is of decisive importance in the sense that it is the sole method available to consumers when selecting purchases.

Seikatsu Club has attained a very high standard in the elimination of and information disclosure on GMOs from an early stage. It is with this in mind that we express our gratitude to our partner producers, who have responded wonderfully to the fervent wishes of our members.

In addition, a new life-manipulating technology, genome editing technology, has appeared recently and is approaching commercialization. It is necessary to establish a clear stance on this technology as soon as possible and take counteracting measures. However, I have a feeling that this is going to be a very troublesome issue.

◆◆ 3. PROTECTING FOOD SELF-SUFFICIENCY AND FAMILY FARMING— OUR DIRECT PRODUCER-CONSUMER PARTNERSHIP

Seikatsu Club began its direct producer-consumer partnership with Yuza Town in 1972. Thus, among our many partnership relations, our relations with Yuza Town have a very long history. At the time, our relationship was with the Yuza Town Agricultural Co-operative, but this has now merged with JA (Japan Agricultural Co-operatives) Shonai Midori. Two years before the partnership began, production adjustments for rice (reductions in areas planted to rice due to overproduction) were initiated. Right up until today, the long history of our relations with Yuza Town has been strongly colored by the struggle against this policy.

It was in the early 1990s that Seikatsu Club members were eating the largest volumes

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of rice produced in Yuza Town. The total consumed reached an annual 160,000 hyo, where one hyo is 60 kg, giving a total of about 9,600 tons. The total number of members was around 200,000 at the time. The membership has now increased to around 370,000, and as we now also source rice from other rice-producing areas, the consumption of Yuza rice has currently slipped below an annual 100,000 hyo.

The ageing of the farming population in Japan is now critical. Especially with rice production there is the additional serious problem of falling consumption and, unfortunately, Seikatsu Club is not free of this trend. Japanese people were eating an annual average of 118 kg of rice at the time of the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, but this has now dropped to around 50 kg. It goes without saying that a reduction in planted areas and conversion to alternative crops is imperative. Despite this, Japan is obliged by the United States and other countries to import agricultural products, and in the midst of a rice glut Japan is still importing rice under the minimum access quota imposed by the WTO rules.

I cannot go into the details of the history of the struggle against production adjustments (reductions in areas planted to rice) here, but I will simply report to you on the outcome of the struggle. In Yuza Town, the reduction in the area planted to rice reached 38%. Simply stated, 38% of the paddy fields cannot be used to produce staple food rice. In addition, as mentioned above, the amount of rice consumed by Seikatsu Club has also declined. From the viewpoint of a partnership, it is vital to handle these problems in an effective way.

In this connection, up to the rice produced this year, the government has determined the reduction in the planted area and allotted the areas among regions nationwide, but the government will abandon this system from next year. How to deal with this situation is becoming a crucial issue that is now being widely addressed in rice-producing communities throughout the country.

As a way of handling the issue, Seikatsu Club came up with the policy of having alternative crops that Seikatsu Club wished to supply grown on the fields that had been forced out of rice production. When that happened, we were able to make effective use of government subsidies, and we started to think about establishing a crop rotation system through the production of a wide array of agricultural products.

Firstly, we thought of soybeans. This would link up with Seikatsu Club partner producers of miso (fermented soybean paste), soy sauce, natto (fermented soybeans), tofu and other food products. Rice grown for processing would become the raw material

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for sembei (rice cookies), then there was rice grown for sake production, vegetables, soba (buckwheat, grown mainly for noodles), and tomatoes for processing, all of which would link up with producers in the same way. None of these were relationships that were developed overnight. For instance, individual tofu makers had preferences about the soybean varieties they would or would not use. In some cases, we simply did not know how to grow some crops, such as natane (rapeseed).

As a result of these endeavors, however, the partnership of Seikatsu Club with Yuza Town has currently come to make use of 62% of all the paddy fields in the town. Converting this to rice, it is the equivalent of about 160,000 hyo, about the same level as when we were purchasing peak amounts of rice from the town. While rice consumption has declined among Seikatsu Club members, they are eating various other kinds of consumer materials from Yuza Town instead of rice, with the result that we have been able to protect Yuza Town’s farmland.

This is why I have emphasized that this is a partnership in terms of both area and diversification, and I believe it is exactly this relationship that guarantees both sustainable production and consumption, supporting family farming and protecting Yuza Town’s beautiful scenery and the multifaceted functions, such as the conservation of water source areas and the transmission of culture, of the rural area.

Of the alternative crops now grown, the largest in volume is feed rice. Japan’s rice production is in a critical state and it can be said that the only hope for saving rice production at present is the growing of feed rice, which is now spreading throughout the country. The first pioneering efforts for feed rice arose in the partnership relation between Yuza Town and Seikatsu Club.

The customer for the feed rice is the Seikatsu Club pork producer Hirata Farm, Co., Ltd. This producer fattens a total of 170,000 pigs each year, but right now, each pig is consuming an annual 79 kg of rice instead of eating the equivalent in corn from the United States. This is even more than the average amount of rice consumed by Japanese people each year. The pigs alone on the Hirata Farm consumed a total of more than 10,000 tons of rice last year.

These efforts for feed rice help to raise food self-sufficiency as well as ensuring that the money that would be paid to the United States in exchange for the corn returns to the local community. We really must do everything we can to sustain these efforts for feed rice. The decisive factors in this will be increases in the rice yield and reduction in production and distribution costs, as well as the permanence of agricultural subsidies.

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There is much more I would like to say about Yuza Town and food self-sufficiency, but I will leave it here for the time being.

◆◆ 4. CURRENT STATE OF THE ELECTRICAL POWER BUSINESS—THE COLLECTIVE PURCHASE OF ELECTRICITY

Seikatsu Club’s electrical power business was stimulated in the aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station accident, but our involvement in the movement for a nuclear phaseout goes back to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident.

Especially our comrades in Hokkaido have made their opposition to the Tomari Nuclear Power Plant very clear, constructing a “citizens’ wind turbine” in 2001. This movement in the direction of a nuclear phaseout has become a unified movement throughout the Seikatsu Club group due, for example, to the efforts by the “Nationwide Network to Oppose the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant and Prevent Radioactive Pollution.” In fact, the predecessor of this movement was the network that was nurtured in the “natural soap movement” to avoid the use of synthetic detergents that began in the mid-1970s, and which can be said to have been a collaborative effort between several co-operatives.

Later, sparked by the Fukushima nuclear accident, it was thought that we should not simply oppose nuclear power, but generate our own renewable and natural energy for collective purchase, and since then our endeavors have moved forward at a rapid pace. The three fundamental policies at present are: 1) To move forward with a nuclear phaseout, promotion of natural energy and CO2 emissions reduction as the three pillars of the business and movement, 2) To push the business forward based on the “Seikatsu Club’s Seven Energy Principles,” and 3) To expand the “collective purchase of electricity” (known as Seikatsu Club Electricity) to include participation by all members.

In this connection, allow me to introduce the “Seikatsu Club’s Seven Energy Principles” here. These are 1) We will rely on energy conservation as a pillar of the activity, 2) We will build a nuclear-free society that reduces CO2 emissions, 3) We will push forward a power generating business that makes contributions to the community and has consideration for the environment, 4) We will seek transparency in the price of the electricity and the mechanism of the electricity distribution, 5) We will deepen our collaboration with the Seikatsu Club partner producing areas and raise their energy

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self-sufficiency, 6) As ethical consumers, we will engage positively in the collective purchase of electricity generated by renewable sources, 7) We will take full responsibility for the process from production to waste disposal. The “ethical consumer,” by the way, is a consumer who engages in consumer activities from an ethical and moral stance.

Based on these seven principles, we are constructing power generating facilities and have been calling on our members to engage in the collective purchase of electricity since June last year. The overall mechanism is presided over by our associated company Seikatsu Club Energy, Co., Ltd. The related natural energy generating facilities are being constructed with a focus on areas where Seikatsu Club is active (where there are facilities related to the consumer co-operative), and at present there are 37 of these generating facilities. As of March this year, the number of members collectively purchasing the electricity was just under 10,000.

We will be starting construction of a further generating facility this year. The name of the facility is the “Shonai-Yuza Solar Power Station,” which is to be built in Yuza Town, introduced in the previous section. As this will be quite a large facility, generating 18,000 MWh of power annually, it will produce enough energy for the needs of about 5,000 households. The estimated construction cost will be around five billion yen, and these funds will be provided through a direct loan from the Seikatsu Club group, financing from JA Shonai Midori (one of the main partners in the project), as well as from local financial institutes and others. Four billion yen will also be raised as a citizens’ fund from among our members and the general public. This project will further promote the diversified partner relationship between Yuza Town and Seikatsu Club by expanding collective purchases from food (F) to energy (E).

◆◆ 5. CURRENT STATE OF COMMUNITY CARE

In 1982, Seikatsu Club Kanagawa began work on a business category known as a “depot” (small-scale shop), and along with this also started up a workers’ collective movement. The establishment of the workers’ collective Ninjin (meaning “people”) to take on the work of the depot was the origin of this movement.

Workers’ collectives are a movement that aims for a mode of work in which the people involved create a workplace through self-funding, thus taking on the role of business managers themselves.

Ninjin carried out not only the work of the depot but also managed the restaurant and

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other facilities attached to the depot. Ninjin thus became a trailblazing model that paved the way for the establishment of many workers’ collectives in different business categories and with different characteristics.

At the time, as with Ninjin, since it was Seikatsu Club members that were involved in the businesses, the central business type was food-related, such as restaurants, supplying ready-made dishes and lunches, bread and so on. Later, however, the main focus of the workers’ collective business shifted toward community welfare. I should clarify here that workers’ collectives related to the Seikatsu Club have grown to just over 500 collectives nationwide, their members totaling something over 17,000 people with a business turnover of around 15 billion yen.

Coming into the 1990s, facilities such as special elderly nursing homes were built in Kanagawa and Chiba, the group’s management resources being intensively invested in welfare activities, with, for instance, a social welfare corporation being established. Following this, welfare projects increased steadily, and along with the enforcement of the Public Nursing Care Insurance Act the group’s welfare-related businesses began to develop dramatically.

In this relation, from the beginning of the 1990s, mutual-aid businesses also began as businesses run by individual Seikatsu Clubs. Following that, in 2001 SCCCU received approval to operate mutual-aid businesses, and the businesses that had existed up to that time were restructured into an overall SCCCU mutual-aid business. However, due to the (detrimental) amendment of the Consumer Co-operatives Act, we were forced to separate the collective purchasing business from the mutual-aid business and had little option but to establish a mutual-aid society. At the end of 2016, the number of members of the CO-OP Mutual-Aid Society, affiliated to the Japanese Consumers’ Co-operative Union (JCCU), was just under 110,000 and that of the Seikatsu Club’s original mutual-aid society developed by Seikatsu Club Kanagawa was just under 40,000.

Here, I would like to introduce the overall numerical situation of the welfare businesses as of FY2015. There is a total of 824 facilities nationwide, employing just under 15,000 people, with just under 66,000 registered users, and a business turnover of 17.2 billion yen, providing 1,110,000 hours of care, such as visiting nursing care. The kinds of welfare support and services provided are visiting nursing care, day service at local care centers, home nursing support, special elderly nursing homes, meals services, transport services, childcare services, as well as businesses based on the Services and Supports for Persons with Disabilities Act.

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The current situation by group is that Tokyo, Kanagawa and Chiba account for 90% of the business turnover, and in the performance over the past five years the growth in business in Chiba has been remarkable. Looking at the business turnover shares by business contents (figures in brackets indicating the number of facilities), visiting nursing care accounts for 16.3% (139), day service at local care centers 13.4% (70), home nursing support 7.2% (76), meals services 6.7% (56), special elderly nursing homes 6.4% (4), and so on, but the business content that has shown impressive growth in recent years is childcare services 10.0% (112), which now has the third largest business turnover.

However, these businesses are not a part of SCCCU’s businesses. At present, with SCCCUMA as the prime example, the role performed at the SCCCU level is to function as logistical support, for example by strengthening solidarity for opportunities to exchange experiences and for business development in each of the local areas. The business scale of the welfare businesses I have introduced here are already outstanding within the consumers’ co-operative field, and considering that the approaching trends will inevitably be in the direction of lower birthrates and population ageing along with higher rates of poverty and growing disparities, this is a task that we need to strengthen further in the future.

Additionally, in the same way as with electricity, we uphold eight principles for welfare and mutual support. Here I will just briefly introduce the eight principles, which are diversity, respect for dignity, a participatory society, work that is humane and rewarding, creating places to be and roles to perform, parental care support, elderly nursing care support, and support to prevent social isolation.

◆◆ 6. INTO THE FUTURE—MY PERSONAL VIEW

Lastly, I would like to share with you my personal view on our future direction.

The first task, naturally, is to further develop and deepen each of the various themes in the FEC Self-sufficient Zones Network that I have introduced above. I believe that it is precisely because we are a co-operative which is rooted in communities, where the people themselves are in charge, and where movement and business are able to coexist, that the potential for the FEC Self-sufficient Zones Network will be put to the test.

At the same time, we should expand our movement with a focus on East Asia. In 1999, SCCCU formed a relationship of solidarity with consumers’ unions in South Korea and Taiwan as the “conference of the three sisters.” All three of us have common

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issues in a food self-sufficiency rate that is far too low, the trend toward low birth rates and population ageing, and nuclear power. I would be delighted if each of us would make efforts toward our FEC Self-sufficient Zones Network, holding meetings to exchange experiences and work in friendly rivalry to develop our movements and businesses.

The second task is to link up the first task with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that came into force in January 2016. The SDGs set out 17 goals with 169 targets that include not only world poverty and hunger but energy, climate change, social disparities, and peace that are to be achieved by the year 2030. The various themes of our FEC Self-sufficient Zones Network are all underpinned by the notion of recirculation. It is exactly this recirculation that guarantees sustainability.

From the awareness of the ICA that it is surely co-operatives that are able to contribute to the attainment of the SDGs, ten co-operatives from around the world have been selected to establish an advisory group for that purpose. Seikatsu Club has been chosen as one of these unions, and because of this it becomes even more important that we link FEC Self-sufficient Zones Network to the SDGs and go forward on the basis that we have been asked to perform a leading role in this matter.

Professor Koyu Furusawa of Kokugakuin University has pointed out that in the efforts to realize the SDGs it is essential to achieve a harmonious balance between the economy, the environment and society, and to reform and control the economy in order to resolve social contradictions such as the limits of the environment along with poverty and disparity issues. He emphasizes that to achieve this, co-operatives, with the self-awareness of their mission, should attempt to resolve the crucial question of “the control and optimization of production and consumption.” If so, we will need once again to recall Dr. Laidlaw’s claim that the theme of the appearance of “the co-operative sector” (the citizen sector) was that it should become the sector that will restrain runaway capital and politics.

The third task is to raise the unionization rate. The unionization rate is an important index of co-operatives. The index expresses the number of member households in the total number of households in a certain area.

Nationwide, the unionization rate of Japanese consumers’ co-operatives has reached 37.7% (FY2015). Hyogo Prefecture and Hokkaido are as high as 60%. For the Seikatsu Club, however, in the areas where we are active, this rate is no more than 0.9% (also FY2015). The core area of the Seikatsu Club group consists of Tokyo, Kanagawa,

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Saitama, Chiba and Nagano, but across these five areas the rate is 1.39%, and 2.11% in the area with the highest unionization rate, Kanagawa.

In the past, Seikatsu Club described itself modestly as the “3% organization,” but the actual situation is as I have depicted above. To become that literal “3% organization” means to become a consumers’ co-operative group with more than one million members in the areas where the Seikatsu Club is currently active.

Seikatsu Club is determined to push forward with the first and second tasks explained above. But to carry these through with greater certainty and tenacity, we need to have more comrades join us in our “multitude of me” (as Kunio Iwane, one of the founders of the Seikatsu Club, has said). At the same time, the unchanging support and cooperation of all of you, our many members, is also indispensable, and it is with this appeal I would like to end this article.

(President of the Seikatsu Club Consumers’ Co-operative Union)