Japan’s Rice Policy at Crossroads amid Output Shift

Tokyo, Dec. 28 (Jiji Press)–Japan’s rice policy is at a crossroads as prices of the country’s staple food stay around record highs, squeezing households. “We’ll change course and boost production,” then Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said in August 2025, declaring a change in the government’s rice policy, under which production adjustment had been maintained. But this was quickly reversed by his successor, Sanae Takaichi, who took office as prime minister in October. Her policy is to keep production in line with demand. The agriculture minister in her cabinet, Norikazu Suzuki, firmly maintains the position of “not committing to prices.” He stresses the need to secure demand first, including foreign demand, and then promote production. If farmers increase production before creating overseas demand, “rice prices will plunge due to an oversupply,” he warns. Shinjiro Koizumi, Suzuki’s predecessor, who worked on measures to cope with soaring rice prices in the Ishiba administration, has said, “We’ve learned that it is difficult to maintain rice prices through the conventional measure of adjusting production.” As uncertainties intensify, such as those posed by climate change, Koizumi believes there is a limit to the method of adjusting production based on demand projections because the projections need to be accurate. On this, Suzuki promised to “improve the way we estimate demand.” Koizumi has emphasized that increasing production is precisely the “policy framework that can respond with flexibility” in order to prevent the market from being disrupted by slight fluctuations in the supply-demand balance. He also proposed that the government immediately send out a message calling for a rice production boost to maintain national production capacities as the number of farmers decreases. According to regional plans on farmland use for the next 10 years, future managers have not been decided for 30 pct of such land. Suzuki says that a shortage of successors in the agricultural sector results from greater difficulties in making money than many other sectors. Takaichi has instructed Suzuki to improve the profitability of the agricultural sector. “There is nothing we can do without demand,” Takaichi has also said, underscoring her policy of stimulating demand for rice including for exports. If the focus stays on balancing supply and demand, the rice industry will have “no path other than toward diminishing equilibrium,” Koizumi has said. If rice production becomes a profitable growth industry that attracts young new farmers, it will also be good for national food security. But this is unlikely to be realized anytime soon. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]