(Adnkronos) – In Japan, rice is everywhere, in almost every meal. From sushi to desserts. In a country that is the fourth largest economy in the world, with a population of 124 million people, there are six ways to describe rice, from husked to ready-to-eat. The prefectures compete for the best rice in Japan. And no one can imagine running out of rice. But in the Land of the Rising Sun there is a ‘rice crisis’, like the paradoxical egg crisis in the United States of Donald Trump. In Japan, they have come to auction off bags of rice from emergency reserves, to be used in the event of famines or natural disasters. It had never happened before in the history of the Land of the Rising Sun, local media point out, recalling the cases in which the reserves were used after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami and the 2018 earthquake.
In February, the government announced that it would tap into reserves to bring 210,000 tons of grain to market. And last Wednesday the Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported on the second auction held at the end of March with about 70,000 tons of rice from the reserves, the last of the 210,000, sold to distributors with the aim of containing the price increase. “Incredibly high”, as acknowledged by the Minister of Agriculture, despite the data speaking of 180,000 more tons of rice produced compared to 2024.
Now, CNN reports, the first bags of rice from emergency reserves, which the government began creating in 1995, two years after a summer of unusual weather that forced Japan to import grain, are on supermarket shelves.
According to the New York Times, rice began to run short in the country last summer and experts attributed the emergency to a combination of factors, from the record heat of the summer of 2023 to the rush to stock up on supplies due to the threats posed by possible typhoons and earthquakes. And also to policies that have systematically reduced the land available for rice cultivation. But, the newspaper explains, Japan also limits production with the stated aim of keeping prices at a certain level and supporting local farmers, so even small disruptions in the supply chain can have ‘enormous’ impacts. And, Shuji Hisano of Kyoto University summarized for the newspaper, basically “no one knows” what happened. Although, he points out, it has become increasingly difficult to track the distribution of rice in Japan because farmers have more and more ‘ways’ to sell rice without going through the largest traditional channels. Thus this trend, combined with production limits, means that even minimal fluctuations in supply and demand can trigger speculative moves.
Last year, according to data from the Tokyo government relaunched by CNN, a 60-kilogram bag of rice cost the equivalent of about 160 dollars, 55% more than two years earlier. According to the Nyt, in the last year Japan has ‘lacked’ more than 200,000 tons of rice, prices have skyrocketed, supermarkets have been forced to impose purchase limits and government rules have exasperated farmers, who took to the streets in Tokyo on the last Sunday in March. Today, the rice that has arrived in supermarkets from emergency reserves does not seem to convince many consumers, worried about the quality, as they tell CNN. Skepticism aside, Japanese media report, further interventions are not excluded if prices cannot be lowered. Parliamentary elections are scheduled for the end of July, the first ‘test’ for Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba.
