Japan is running out of rice

Japan is running out of rice. Stocks have fallen to their lowest levels in decades, prompting fears that emergency reserves may need to be accessed. Prices have hit a 30-year high as private companies held just 1.56 million tons in June, the lowest level since 1999 and 20 per cent less than the previous year.

Partly this is just the result of a poor crop caused by unfavourable climatic conditions – high temperatures combined with water shortages. But there is more to it than that: whereas Japan would once have shrugged off an occasional bad year, the poor state of the farming industry in Japan means seasonal fluctuations in yield are now more serious.  

With an increasingly elderly workforce and more and more abandoned rice paddies, the industry is in serious decline. The Mainichi newspaper carried out a survey of 107 municipalities and found that 40 per cent of rice paddies had been left unmanaged or had shrunk in size.