Concerns over rice shortage growing in Japan

But Japan is currently in a transitional period as new rice is being released into the market.

The main rice-producing regions start to harvest new rice in September, so the shortage should end soon.

Hoarders are there to create artificial hysteria for lack of rice...

I would have alluded to closing the stable door after the horse has bolted,but this scenario has been looming for the past 25 years.

You reap what you sow.

Our surrounding fields are full of growing rice plants. Probably October will be harvest. Some already went to make Wase saki.

In July, rice prices jumped 18.0 percent from the previous year, the biggest rise in 20 years, due in part to higher demand from foreigners, as the annual total of people visiting Japan from abroad in 2024 is forecast to reach a record 35 million

Still blaming foreigners for shortage?

https://soranews24.com/2024/08/22/foreign-tourists-blamed-for-japan-rice-shortage-as-reiwa-rice-riots-leaves-shelves-bare/

I for one do not care. I will quite happily replace the rice with potatoes.

I read another site's story about the same topic. It stated that even if every tourist ate rice at three meals a day (an unusual occurrence) it would only account for 0.5% of total rice consumption in Japan. So the rising tourism is not the issue.

The results of a hopelessly inefficient agricultural sector.

Acreage reduction policy to keep prices high.

How do you run out of rice? That's like running out of air. It's a staple food here.

Government caused and frankly the hinderance of Asia markets to provide affordable rice in Japan. Supporting a dying Japanese industry sadly has reduced the quality of Japan rice. It is not what it used to be. While other Asian markets have improved in their strains, over protectionism of the industry by the Japanese government hasn’t encouraged improvements. Some other counties rice now are actually better. Japanese strain grown in Indonesia is amazing.. Only the Japanese consumers is hurt to the benefit of the few in a controlled rice industry.

Burning Bush

That was Mainichi Shimbun

Why has Japan been hit with rice shortages, soaring prices despite normal crops?

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20240823/p2a/00m/0bu/024000c

Probably October will be harvest. Some already went to make Wase saki.

Seems an irrelevant comment seeing harvest is not for a few months. Bottoms-up

You missed replying to Asiaman7Today  04:40 pm JST

Thank you for always taking an irrelevant interest in so many of my posted comments. October is in 36 days. Close in my book.

No shortage of rice in Ishikawa in fact the shelves in the rice area are as full as they were in June all local supermarkets. We get our rice at the local JA anyway to support local farmers in Noto.

You know, as a frequent visitor to Japan it's all rather disheartening when we tourists are blamed for everything... including rice shortages. I actually eat more noodles than rice when I'm in Japan... I find the rice to be bland and tasteless... just stodge.

As others have pointed out, just people bulk buying I think

That was Mainichi Shimbun

Why has Japan been hit with rice shortages, soaring prices despite normal crops?

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20240823/p2a/00m/0bu/024000c

Very informative article!

— Quote —

Because consumption of bread, pasta and other alternative foods is increasing, if farmers produced the same amount of rice as before, there would be a surplus, causing the price of rice to drop. To avoid such a situation, production has been cut year by year, and recently only about 60% of rice paddies are in use, with the others set aside under the acreage reduction policy. Production has thus been kept at under half of the peak of 14.45 million metric tons annually.

Rice production volume of the agricultural sector in Japan from 2012 to 2021

8.52 million tons in 2012.

7.56 million tons in 2021.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/645885/japan-rice-production-volume/

The local Media and Press are entirely responsible for the fear mongering and for callously panicking the population with apocalyptic news over earthquakes, typhoons or tourists buying everything.

We all know that the locals are very guillable and so easily influenced by those mass hysteria news, made only to create audience and traffic.

Same story with water, toilet paper, etc.

Different hypothetical disaster, same outcome.

Wow!!! Another thing is, rice production is said to be very labour intensive. Maybe there just aren't enough hands to get enough rice out.

With the modern rice harvesting machines the rice can be cut, sorted, and collected very quickly with just one or two people.

Many rice fields can be harvested in a single day.

https://youtu.be/WSdfFoUFQrk?si=s3U1IL8sDJlY0pBG

Stop exporting and "poof" problem solved! If it's so important, let the foreign markets suffer and take care of the domestic buyers!

I have no idea at all where this writer is getting their information. Local farmers are having record harvests. This is all scare mongering, or restaurants snatching at a reason to jack up prices.

Blame it on Tourists again!

Burning Bush

With the modern rice harvesting machines the rice can be cut, sorted, and collected very quickly with just one or two people.

But the planting, watering etc. it must be a nightmare.

Looks like you don't know much about rice farming. Planting like harvesting is done by machines. There is no watering other than filling the field with water.

I have noticed there are fewer of the pink snails that eat the rice plants. Climate change probably.

I can only speak about Chiba which has a considerable amount of rice farmers. What I did notice is that: the majority are over 50yrs old, their farming land is small so so is the yield/profit, and no young people are rice farmers.

Farming is a tough job and I don't see young people willing to work that hard outside for such small income. Therefore, most rice farmers receive government subsidies through organizations like JA. Rice farmers either have to merge or corporations need to take over rice farming and modernize to increase the scale.

Japan can easily import more rice to cover the gap but there's pride involved. Continuing to give subsidies to rice farmers who can't make profit and will soon stop working because of their age is a dead end. Expand, modernize, and import seem the only options.

Everything is fine folks! The harvest approaches!

(And luckily this typhoon will be there to blame if the harvest is not quite up to expectations.)

Talk about creating unnecessary panic. Ridiculous.

Rice production is down because the elderly farmers are dying off and the young are making a beeline for Tokyo.

Any Japanese journo needs to get off their shiris and take a 2 hour trip out of Tokyo where they’ll be met with deserted farmhouses and untilled fields-there’s the problem!

In recent years many Japanese have been brainwashed into preferring brand-name varities of rice for home consumption. Most restaurants serve generic varieties which grow in the same soile and are just as good. In fact, I watched a taste test on TV once, in which panel members were asked to name the variety they most prefer, and the "Brand X" got more votes than the specialty types. Just wash it and steam it properly and it'll be fine. In a blind test, people who insist on eating Akita Komachi or Niigata Sasanishiki probably can't tell the difference. I have a feeling that the current "shortage" is only in famous brand-name rice and there's plenty of the other types if you're not picky about what type you eat.

The foreigner always gets whacked for no rice.

Foreigner gobbling up too much of the stuff on holiday

Imported labour not knowing how delicate rice planting is

Imported labour not harvesting properly

Imported labour stealing a good harvest

Pesky foreigners living in Japan eating the stuff while trying in vein to assimilate

Have I missed anything?

"Rice acreage reduction is a terrible policy. The government spends over 300 billion yen (about $2.06 billion) in subsidies annually to decrease the amount of rice produced, thus going out of its way to raise the price and increasing the burden on consumers."

Harvesting is going on in Chiba.

It always starts after Obon

Some years back there used to be huge storehouses, government warehouses full of rice, floor to ceiling. Are they saying that too is all gone?

Those that grow it says there is no impact, it seems as if someone is trying to force the price to go nowhere but up causing a panic.

A farmer in the northern prefecture of Aomori, however, said, "High temperatures are causing rice to grow faster, but it's going well. There was no impact from typhoons. There's no need to panic."

A person familiar with the agriculture ministry's thinking said, "We've heard from producing areas that rice is growing well.

The rice 'shortage' explained by a former Agriculture Ministry bureaucrat. https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20240823/p2a/00m/0bu/024000c

Condensed: Blame the LDP.

Some years back there used to be huge storehouses, government warehouses full of rice, floor to ceiling. Are they saying that too is all gone?

A few years ago I was told by a woman who worked as a rice trader for a major trading company (and visited MAFF frequently) that the J. government was treaty bound to import X tons of foreign rice every year. That rice, mainly Thai IIRC, was stored at vast expense to the tax payer and then sent abroad as foreign aid, because Japanese people wouldn't eat it. One assumes they're still doing it...

I don't understand how people intend to cook their stockpiled rice when a mega quake occurs and the power/ water supply is short. It's probably more efficient to just drink the water used to cook the rice and survive with that along with canned foods that don't require cooking. I'm baffled I can't get rice at my local rice market over this.

We currently get about 3 million tourists per month, each one on average spending about 16 days here

Given that most come from China, SK, and Taiwan, 16 days struck me as long, but apparently the average for China is two months!! See page 2

https://www.mlit.go.jp/kankocho/tokei_hakusyo/content/001609726.pdf

My takeaway is that such people are studying or working (err, "researching") on a tourist visa.

As for rice, it's still August, so very little of the harvest will be in so far.

This rice shortage is because of the Japanese people themselves who panic buy and hoard! And also the Japanese farmers who kept complaining about rice from foreign country being sold in Japan at lower price than Japanese rice as they didn’t want competition. Then the Government increased rice import taxes dramatically and now hardly any company ( except those Indian grocery stores ) import rice from abroad. I miss the days from 2015 when I could easily buy quality Australian grown rice in Seiyu at a price of 20% less than the lowest Japanese rice!

I've noticed that our Boston-area Japanese supermarkets have had a much smaller selection of rice from Japan in the past year. We're rice snobs so that's what we eat, and my Akitan wife has had to go without her cherished Akita Komachi rice since 2 harvests ago.

Only learned of the shortage yesterday when I went to the supermarkets and saw the shelves for rice empty.

Good thing I still /already have stocks

Japanese agriculture is stuck 60 years behind much of the world thanks to government meddling that has stifled innovation and the government and farmers know it. The problem is that voters don't know it.

Perhaps this "rice shortage" panic has been created as a way to get the public on-board with modernizing agriculture in Japan.

For a well educated population, irrational fear by ignorant urbanites has Japan stuck. Perhaps the public will wake up and instead of voting to continue the ban on GMOs, will demand that the government allow GMOs.

Shortage will be fixed soon, but I need rice tomorrow…

@justasking

Costco Canada sales big bags of Koshihikari rice, imported from Japan.

Rice is dirt cheap in America,it depends on the quality of rice ,you choose to buy,this storm will destroy a lots of rice field this week,creating more shortage

It will return to normal soon, a lot of drama here...

@Alfie Noakes Yes, this market access of foreign rice was negotiated decades ago with the USA hoping it could get market access but J gov did J gov things and did as you describe, Thai (and other low quality rice) is imported and put in storage or used in low end senbei or used as food aid abroad.

Why not just import some rice from California? The USA (in the West) grows a lot of high quality rice. The West is the best!

Global shortages were caused by an Indian export ban. It mostly affected poor countries. Japanese shortages were created by scare-mongering about quakes and hoarding. Not sure why Japanese companies can't just import more. If the government levy subsidies or block imports, the government are the problem. And if it costs more, you have to charge more.

Slightly suspicious that this happens a short while after there are reports of Japanese people eating less rice and chubbing up on Western food.

As for foreign tourists, I'm innocent: I have never eaten rice in Japan. Just pasta or spuds. In the UK, for a change, I sometimes pop a boil-in-the-bag rice in a saucepan, but pasta and spuds are less fuss. I wouldn't dare buy any in a Japanese supermarket right now. Wouldn't want to get chased by hordes of angry housewives.

.

So I have question for those stock up or hoard rice.

How do you avoid weevils ?

If one stores rice for long the weevils hatch.

I use mylar bags or air tight glass jars and add bay leaves and cloves.

Anybody have some thoughts on that ?

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Wallace,Every rice field in Japan will be impacted by the Typhoon,this storm will not only have strong winds ,and then turn into a depression and it will flood most areas in Japan Google Zoomearth Hyogo

The gov't makes it hard to start new farms. You can't just buy farm land (of which there is a lot) and start planting. You need permission from the local farmers to get your permits. Which is ironic as Japan is known for it's fairly loose zoning laws when it comes to city living.

Bring back organic Lundburg rice from America. It was so popular in Japan and so authentic that the Government got scared and put massive tariffs on the product. So now Japan gets a fake "shortage" to keep the prices high.

You can make rice pudding with instant rice,I have no patience with rice,that I why used instant rice,only thing you need to make rice pudding quick is Instant rice Condensed milk and Raisin Google Rice Pudding Made With Instant Rice

It will return to normal soon, a lot of drama here...

But I need rice now.

it seem most have no Idea. Young are taken up farming. It is that before the children of farmers when straight from finishing basic education to the family farm. Just the young and parent encouraged them into more profitable fields instead of farming. These young people usually return to the farm because after chasing their dream realise farming is a way better lifestyle and return to the family most that is. Nature Des ratted is another element. This can cause a flow on effect where man power is allocated to different areas making farm labour shortages. Now just before harvest in north Japan where the high quality rice is grow has a pending typhoon tracking up the middle of this area. Typhoon knock down growing rice making machcanical harvesting abilities impossible reverting to hand harvest. Also terrist farming is get fazed out of rice farming due it the difficultly with machine harvesting. There is many elements to the storage. But to blame it sole on tourist is false.

Japan grows 7.5 million tons of rice per years; Exported is 26,000 tons. So export rice = 4% of the annual harvest not really the cause of the rice shortage. This export rice commands very high prices which add good value the Japan GDP and these export are contract out before planting so no you can,t hold back pay for exports. You can hold back the exports but it very bad business model. Those that claim hoarding are wrong. Controlls are manage JA and JA are the authority that control water release and this determined end results. E.G. size of the harvest. If estimated that there will be an above average harvest the release of water is delay. This story lacks knowledge of the rice industrial and has not did due diligence on the subject. So yes mis informative to add to growing list of mis information getting posted by JT.

Almost entirely the govts fault due to it encouraging rice growers to limit production to avoid a surplus (which is usually the case) and a fall in prices. It's not good for the growers or rice consumers.

not really a surprise, less born younger people of whom then everyone wants to make effortless money in big cities, namely becoming an internet influencer, manga artist or bitcoin rich, that means in fact much less people working in rural areas on rice fields, therefore although consumption shrinks and high tech cultivating maybe grows, but finally producing of rice shrinks a lot faster

CS ok Lundburg rice, so what type of rice because they grow a myriad of varieties, from short and long grain rices to arborio, sushi, and basmati. Also water quality determines the quality of the rice. Lumdburg use water derive from the catchment which is high in sediments. Where Japanese wet farming methods use direct snow melt with little sediment. This just prove the USA palete is uncultured compare the Japanese palate. Have you ever seen a US American season a piece of meat weather it beef to fish they kill the natural taste and aroma with over seasoning. This is through out the USA culinary culture. To add a bit of sweetest to a dish it is well over done. To add season it well over done.

With the modern rice harvesting machines the rice can be cut, sorted, and collected very quickly with just one or two people. Many rice fields can be harvested in a single day.

For large commercial operations yes, however the overwhelming majority of rice farmers in Japan are small family operations and they do not have the money to invest in the harvesters used in commercial farming.

They have to do it by hand, and that is how it is done by most. Same as with other labor intensive harvesting, like sugar cane.

things to note.

there were panic news in media incl this one that Japan is facing "shortage" of rice supply.

some people just run to shop and bought all rice available-just before obon.

than gov media spread news abt megaquake will appear anytime soon,so these who did not run to shop before did this time and bought remaining rice stock.

facts are that there is no rice supply shortage on market.

I went to local JA and they have enough of stock of rice from last seasons harvest.

in addition of that rice harvesting season is about to start some 2-3wks later/up to location while southern parts are having harvest earlier/so there will be enough of new rice at shop shells in some month or so.

there is still some rice from California available as well/I saw in local supermarkets/when 10kg costs some 2.800jpy or so,

so there is zero reason for any panic.stay calm and dont believe to media crap 100%.

So Japan. LOL. Media screams about "MEGA-QUAKE" and (Japanese) people stock up on...(rice). Media screams about a "rice shortage" and (Japanese) hoarders stock up on rice. Media reports that (Japanese) companies have jacked up their prices by a fifth(!) from normal prices...and Japanese blame....*foreigners"!

Passive Aggressive Japan to the extreme. They crow how much money they're making off foreigners, but then slap them in the face with backhanded insults at every turn once they arrive, and seek to blame them for every (Japanese-sourced) ill known to man. Smh.

Yabura: Majority small scale farm use machanical means. Mostly rented through JA. Where hand method are use is where the very hard the negate a mechanical means EG. tereacing farming. This land was use for growing Hemp prior to USA outlawing hemp farm and were told to grow rice on these difficult terrace plots. To rice grow by hand is not profitable. These small farmer that do by hand is their personal crop to substance the family rice intake for that season. Also there is a big black market for rice. To get around this farmer lease these plots out in return for the % of the harvest. My partner family has 60 acres of land which they lease out and in return get a % of the harvest it may be Negi, onions water melon,cabbage and rice etc. This is share out throughout the family saving them the out lay of fund. This how the black market works. Money don't change hand only commodities.

California rice is amazing. One day I did a little test. I used California rice instead of Japanese rice.

I showed them 3 different bags of rice. All of them swore up and down that I used Japanese rice.

They were all wrong. They praised it. Then they proceeded Japan-splained the unique qualities of Japanese rice.

I guess that California rice identifies as Japanese.

Let them eat bread.

Japanese bakeries are amazing..!

Redtail Swift

Once we bought 5kg bag at Costco as wanted try something new.honestly speaking was slightly different than one we had at home/koshihikari/ as had a little different smell and favour...but as for gaijin like me-no issue at all.I think brand was like Calrose or Carlose...something like that...

Other nations have over production and export rice. Japan could import some in the short term to alieviate any short fall in stocks. No need to panic, nobody will go hungry.

Japan has lots of friend they can lean on for food support if they need to, but its not needed at this point.

Never mind eh. Anyway, we have loads of basmati and jasmine rice in the gaff which is what I usually use if we have rice.

‘I’m always sorted for Japanese rice, my old neighbour from the sticks farms rice and sells me 30KG every harvest at about half the store prices, lol

FalseFlagsteve: Has just given us anther example of how the rice black market works.

Other nations have over production and export rice. Japan could import some in the short term to alieviate any short fall in stocks. No need to panic, nobody will go hungry.

Happened before, and it caused a panic and everyone stated that only "Japanese" produced rice was palatable.

Japanese are brainwashed into thinking that anything Japanese is always better than "gaikokuland"