Japan's farming could be going to seed

'Tis the season for predictions, and last week Hiromasa Yonekura, the chairman of the Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren), told Asahi Shimbun he believed Japan will decide in 2013 to take part in the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks.

Yonekura is also chairman of Sumitomo Chemical, which in 2010 signed a tie-up agreement with American agrichemical giant Monsanto, so TPP, which would remove many existing trade barriers between the United States and Japan, is something Yonekura has a stake in.

Media discussions of TPP usually focus on Japanese farmers who fear the import of cheaper foreign produce, but the Yonekura connection implies a more elemental agricultural concern: seeds.