JAPAN Law and Practice Contributed by: Eri Hirata, Takunori Kono, Naoki Matsumoto and Ikki Kawasaki, Nishimura & Asahi
4. Legal Concepts and Regulatory Definitions 4.1 Definition and Scope of Agribusiness The Cropland Act identifies the following as agricul- tural and related businesses: • storage, transportation or sale of agricultural and livestock products; • electricity obtained by converting agricultural and livestock products or forestry products, or by using agricultural and livestock products or forestry prod- ucts as a heat source; • manufacturing of materials required for agricultural production; • entrusted agricultural work; • establishment and management of agri-tourism facilities; and • agricultural photovoltaic power-generation busi- nesses. 4.2 Conflicts Across Regulatory Instruments Regulations Governing Agricultural Legislation In Japan, the MAFF, the Forestry Agency and the Fish- eries Agency have jurisdiction over various laws and ordinances governing their respective primary indus- tries as a whole, and there are few problems with conflicts or overlapping between agricultural laws and regulations and other regulating authorities or legal fields. However, Japan’s agricultural regulations do not cover various issues in a uniform manner under one basic law. Rather, as stated in 2.1 Agriculture- Sector Policies and Planning Instruments , Japan has developed laws to govern each subject and regulatory purpose, and has also enacted a number of special laws that reflect the interests and intentions of the administration from time to time. It is therefore neces- sary to keep in mind that the alignment and replace- ment of definitions in multiple agricultural laws and regulations in Japan may not always be consistent, and that the priority and requirements for the appli- cability of those laws and regulations are not always clear. In primary industry sectors, there is a tendency for practical operations to be implemented via admin- istrative guidance provided by regulatory agencies rather than by the practice of private law, and when
• glass bottles (empty bottles used for agricultural chemicals, etc); • waste acid, waste alkali (waste agricultural chemi- cals); • waste plastic (vinyl for houses, etc); • solid animal waste (waste generated by the slaugh- tering and dismemberment of livestock at slaugh- terhouses and meat processing plants); and • animal carcasses and manure (limited to livestock farming). When personally transporting or disposing of industrial waste, a person or entity must comply with the statu- tory industrial waste disposal standards and store the waste in accordance with the industrial waste stor- age standards until the waste is transported. How- ever, when the storage, transportation and disposal of industrial waste is entrusted to a third party, it must be entrusted to a contractor that has a licence under the Act on Waste Management and Public Cleaning to handle the relevant industrial waste. When the waste is entrusted to this third party, the contractor must execute a written entrustment contract that states relevant statutory matters. Act on Promotion of Global Warming Countermeasures Any person whose activities are described in the list below is regarded as a “Specified Emitter” and must report the amount of greenhouse gas emissions, etc, calculated to have been emitted by their business every fiscal year to the minister with jurisdiction over the business of the Specified Emitter. These activities are: • “use of fertilisers on cultivated land” that emits more than 3,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year (from April 1st to March 31st of the following year); • “feeding livestock”, “managing livestock excre- ment”, “rice cultivation”, “incineration of plant- based materials” and “production of compost” which releases more than 107 (3,000/28) tons of methane per year; and • “management of livestock excrement”, “use of fertilisers in arable land or forest land”, “incinera- tion of plant-based materials” and “production of compost” which emits over 11.3 (3,000/265) tons of nitrogen dioxide per year.
39 A GRICULTURA L LAW 20 26
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