Japan's farm exports in 2021 to top ¥1 tril for 1st time

Before celebrating the increase in export of agricultural products, Japan should make more efforts to increase its food self-sufficiency rate, which currently stands at dismal 39%.

Increase imports as well to give people more choice. Local fruits are insanely expensive and the variety isn't great either.

Hurray to South East Asian farmers on "trainee visa" but they can only stay max of 3years, very careful not to call them immigrants.

Very good news!

Japan is rapidly becoming the food basket of Asia. Would be good to see, in coming years, more young people under 50 moving out of Tokyo, Osaka etc and into rural communities to take up agriculture. Better lifestyle and likely more riches to be made. Win-win.

1 trillion yen ($8.8 billion)

In terms of sums, that is some surprisingly small potatoes, pardon the pun.

With that surplus, how about making stuff cheaper over here?

It's already cheap. Japan has been in stagnation for past 3 decades keeping prices cheap for a major country that's very developed.

Other prices worldwide like gas, oil, raw resources, transportation, or shutting down most nuclear plants for past decade will also affect prices over time.

I am from Akita near Aomori that produces apples. In my childhood, we ate apples everyday. In those days, apples were cheap but sour. Today, apples are very sweat and big but very expensive. I tried American apples before but they were smaller and skins were harder. My American friend liked Japanese pears - nijisseiki (20th century). They said they were juicy.

Japanese food imports are cheap and low quality but domestically produced food is expensive.

Being able to buy a single vegetable or piece of fruit is not an option which also limits choice for the consumer

Meat is way overpriced in Japan but maybe that is for the better…

When one reviews J agriculture subsides one starts to get a picture of how lopsided the costs to the consumer.

These OECD numbers are from 2018, just brushing against the preposterous cost to the J tax payer. In fact it is a triple whammy.

Chapter 13. Japan Support to agriculture

https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/agr_pol-2018-17-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/agr_pol-2018-17-en

Before celebrating the increase in export of agricultural products, Japan should make more efforts to increase its food self-sufficiency rate, 

My main concern is how much taxpayer money is being spent on increasing food exports. I doubt it is difficult to sell Japanese beef, strawberries, apples, etc. overseas if the taxpayer is paying for huge promotional campaigns and is airfreighting the produce to the posh department store in Hong Kong, or wherever it is people are buying it. The farmers growing the high end produce that is exported will also be the richest ones. All the taxpayer support is not helping some granddad farmer with his rice field and a little veggie patch with negi and daikon.

@Bungle Yes. Profits for everyone in the value chain is vital! There seems to be a large number of folks under the age of 35 who think profits are a bad thing. Profits allow farmers to build a home, cloth her family, and live a quality life. Without profits, the entire agri-food system collapses. Thanks to profits the old CCCP went from an importer of grains to a huge exporter.