Rice price jumps at Japan supermarkets amid heat damage, tourism boom

Blaming tourists for this is really pushing it. Nobody goes to Japan to fill up on endless servings of rice. What next? Lower oxygen levels as tourists breathing too much?

Last summer, hardly 10 months ago, the agriculture ministry was lamenting how rice consumption was decreasing again last year, just like its been doing for the past couple decades.

So they have been saying for the past several years:

"With demand for rice as staple food continuing its downward march, the ministry has been encouraging farmers to switch over to soybeans and wheat, as well as produce rice for animal feed."

Read one of the many reports about it from last summer here:

https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/society/general-news/20230807-128057/

And not a word about the ever decreasing population loss in rural areas,aging farmers and the huge amounts of fallow land?

These Kyodo reports are full of unspoken facts…

high demand from booming inbound tourism.

Utter garbage. No fan of the overtourism glut we're being punished with, but it's rediculous to draw them into this.

How about looking at how inefficient the rice farming industry is and how much it's protected by tarrifs.

with pundits attributing it to a tight supply as a result of last summer's high temperatures and high demand from booming inbound tourism.

These pundits seem adept at making excuses for LDP economic policy fails for the Japanese people.

Thanks Ueda and Kuroda !

Not only does their QE boost capital accumulation for very large asset holderss, devalue the currency, boost the regressive gains to the tourist industry, energize the long sought inflation but also indirectly stimulates demand among cash flush inbound visitors to the detriment of residents.

The Japanese people get it coming and going with the neo-feudal LDP policies.

Japan has seen a rise in tourists, gaining a boost from the removal of COVID-19 travel restrictions and a weak yen.

Of course in the end all of these outcomes for the Japanese workers are placed at the feet of the troublesome foreign tourists, not the LDP and BOJ.

Their skill lies in shifting blame, little else.

What’s causing the recent depreciation of the yen is high interest rates in the U.S. and other industrialized countries, factors outside BOJ’s or LDP’s control. The J gov should give more subsidies to rice growers to ensure stable supplies of rice.

It's hilarious. California is happy to send some of our tasty Japanese varietal rice to Japan.

Blaming tourists for this is really pushing it.

A family member told me at the yakiniku restaurant that she works at in the suburbs of Osaka half of the rice ordered by Japanese customers is left uneaten every night.

@tamanegi That's a good point. More places should offer different serving sizes. Don't waste rice and save a few tens of yen.

Rice is cheap in the US,I usually pay 1.68 ,for a box of instant rice

Yoshinoya Holdings Co, the operator of a major beef bowl chain, switched from domestically produced rice to a blend of Japanese and foreign rice this spring, 

I bet they've keeping that quiet. "We use gaimai" is a sure-fire way to send customers to their beef bowl rivals.

ZEN-NOH is responding to the ever sliding yen and exporting rice, Japanese consumers need to compete with their falling currency with global consumers armed with more valuable money.

Costo Canada retails Koshihikari exported by ZEN-NOH.

The number of rice paddies in very rural Iwate, where I live, has dramatically decreased over the past several years. I don't know if it's because of farmers retiring or some government policy, but the decrease is real. Fewer paddies, less rice. That's at least part of the reason.

These pundits seem adept at making excuses for LDP economic policy fails for the Japanese people.

and blaming foreigners for everything. idiots.

A drop of 90k tons out of 6.6 million is 1.3% which is a trivial amount. The price went up by 10% because farmers energy, fertilizer and other costs have been rocketing up.

This is directly due to Japan's government policies.

Mentioning tourists is ridiculous

MeiyouwentiToday  07:44 am JST

What’s causing the recent depreciation of the yen is high interest rates in the U.S. and other industrialized countries, factors outside BOJ’s or LDP’s control. The J gov should give more subsidies to rice growers to ensure stable supplies of rice.

Don’t you think that having short-term real rates in Japan at -3% has nothing to do with the depreciation of the JPY? If the BOJ hiked the rate to 2% (where it should be), you would see the JPY skyrocket. Of course, this would have all types of terrible consequences (in particular, repayment of mortgages at variable rates). Anyway, Japan is responsible for its money printing, not other countries.

Yesterday, we bought a 2kg bag of brown rice at a 10% lower price. I guess I live in a no-tourist location.

Japanese rice is such a scam and now they want more money. Rice farmers are paid to not produce in order to artificially inflate the prices which is all orchestrated by the government and JA. Rice import tax is roughly 800% so you can imagine the corruption and inefficiencies. Of course the Japanese public end up flipping the bill.

Thailand produces a lot of different varieties of rice - far more varieties than Japan - and some of it is very good. Japan could always freely import it from there and then we don't always have to eat bland Japanese pudding rice.

I remember back in '93, when Japan had a really bad year for rice crops. They reluctantly imported from California and the media was constantly denigrating or trying to cause suspicion on it.

They'd find one bag with a bug or non-perfect looking rice and dwell on it for days and it'd be the talk of all the morning talk shows.

They also showed interviews with "people on the street" and predominantly showed people saying it wasn't was good as Japanese rice but cut out the people who said it tasted almost exactly the same.

I know this because a couple of my friends were interviewed too and they said exactly that and weren't shown on the news like the others were.

Japan has this thing about their rice. CA rice is delicious and about half the price of Japan's and importing from Thailand would also help lower the overall cost.

As of now, there's about a 530% tariff on rice from the US. People here are paying an arm and a leg because of the govt. Nothing to do with tourists.

Under a WTO agreement, Japan imports American rice, which is stored in silos for two years before being sold off as animal feed.

I once secretly cooked Japanese-style rice I had brought from Australia for my friend's wife who was vehemently pro Japanese rice and she failed to notice. There is so much conceit about the superiority of Japanese rice and Japanese food in general (and some foreigners seem to have fallen for it too) and the supposed refined sense of the local palate. All BS of course.

Thailand produces a lot of different varieties of rice - far more varieties than Japan - and some of it is very good. Japan could always freely import it from there and then we don't always have to eat bland Japanese pudding rice.

.

I always bring back exotic strains of rice from SE Asia.I have a brown (actually black) from Thailand sitting on my shelf which is delicious.

Later this year I’ll be bringing a couple of kilos back from Vietnam…

The average price of rice has surged at supermarkets in Japan, -----, with pundits attributing it to a tight supply as a result of last summer's high temperatures -----.

The rapid and catastrophic warming up of the climate is the root of the problem.

Nepalese black long-grain rice has a lovely aroma and a nice, long shape. It's especially aromatic when cooking.

""The average price of rice has surged at supermarkets in Japan, data from the private and public sectors showed Wednesday, with pundits attributing it to a tight supply as a result of last summer's high temperatures and high demand from booming inbound tourism.""

So what else can we blame on tourists??

High air fairs? High shinkansen fairs? High food prices? High drinks prices? High fuel costs? Hummm.

Oh forgot to mention Tourist Pay TIPS while locals don't soon tourist will be blamed for opening this can of wars.

Damn if you do Damn if you don't.

Most years Japan grows more rice than what is needed.

@wallace

Brown rice appears 10% cheaper because it retains the bran making it appear heavier, but you get fewer grains than white rice.

Hello Kitty 321

@wallace

Brown rice appears 10% cheaper because it retains the bran making it appear heavier, but you get fewer grains than white rice.

Both brown rice and brown flour are always more expensive than the white varieties. My comment was the price of the brown rice was 10% cheaper than the normal price. It is still rice.

The government should subsidize farming with all that tourism yen flowing in

Let's blame those annoying foreign tourists again... of course it's their fault... everything is. You know it could just be bad luck... it happens.

@wallace

No, brown rice is generally 10% cheaper than white rice if you buy it at a rice merchant’s. Rice is stored as brown rice then polished before selling to produce white rice. Brown rice saves the expense of polishing and is also heavier.

@UAfan

The farmers are not getting the extra money, they sold their rice last year, it is the supermarkets that are making more profits.

With over 11.5 million foreign tourists visiting Japan between January and April, it probably did have an effect on the amount of rice consumed.

Hello Kitty 321

@wallace

No, brown rice is generally 10% cheaper than white rice if you buy it at a rice merchant’s. Rice is stored as brown rice then polished before selling to produce white rice. Brown rice saves the expense of polishing and is also heavier.

We buy our brown rice from the local food store and the price is always higher than white rice. I buy 15 kg of whole wheat flour from merchants in Kyushu and Shiga. The price is higher than the white flour they sell.

"Brown rice, due to its small amount of oil in the bran layer, has a shorter shelf life compared to white rice. This makes brown rice more costly as more resources are needed to preserve the quality of brown rice during transportation and storage."

The last brown rice was ¥1050/2 kg. White rice ¥850/2 kg. The brown rice was 10% cheaper than the usual price.

Sorry, but NO ONE comes to Japan to eat or buy rice, especially when you can get equally as good if not better rice in other countries for a quarter of the price, if not a tenth. Sorry, but this is entirely the fault of giving too many subsidies to elderly farmers for too long. I wonder if Yoshinoya is announcing the fact that they are mixing domestic with Japanese rice? More and more places will do this, and you know what? Japanese will NOT notice the difference. They'll claim to, if you tell them, of course, but in reality they won't notice one bit.

One aging LDP voting rice farmer has a “farm” about the size of 2 or 3 tennis courts, and because of LDP subsidies this supports him…. But these guys are dying off, and no one will take over such a small “farm”.

His district has 900 or so Eligible votes to elect the LPD politician but my area in Tokyo needs 90,000+ votes to elect a politician of equal level (NHK showed the stats on screen during that election)

The laws also prevent one farmer or company from owning too much (as in 6-8 tennis courts or more) of farm land in one area…

So the grossly inefficient rice framing, LDP vote buying system staggers onwards… but screws over the rest of the country.

@smithinjapan

You are wrong.

I live dead smack in central Tokyo, and (mainly) Chinese tourists are buying everything, and this includes even bags of rice from the small ‘My Basket’ Aeon stores that now dot central Tokyo.

I am in those stores shopping when huge groups (seem like family groups) arrive and look at nearly every product.

if it says made in Japan or produce of Japan etc, it is fair game. You can watch them get on their phone, call some one, I presume in China, talk about the products and then Laos the entire stock on the shelf into their basket…

Could be rice… toothpaste, Thoth brushes… snack foods… alcohol especially.. and so on.

And so the Chinese owned suitcase store that just opened up is selling literally hundreds of suitcases per day for tourists to help take their purchases back. This shop

is 50 meters from my apartment and I I see their truck offload suitcases many times per day they sell so many.

(I am seriously thinking of opening a suitcase store as their competitor) #BigProfita

@Hello Kitty 321

Japan desperately needs to liberalize the agricultural markets which includes open competition from buyers of rice. JA needs to go away. It was unnoticed when the government rejected the application to renew the license of the Dojima rice futures market a couple of years ago. Futures markets are vital in sending price signals to farmers, in a free market, so they can determine what crops to plant to meet future demand and get "paid to store rice." Hedging on the futures market also helps farmers reduce risk and manage finances.

Yes, I know JA is a large group of co-ops but the trouble with co-ops is that they inevitably become less business minded and less efficient every year and usually in the end put things like health spas and gas stations (JA-SS) ahead of profit driven, market focused efficiency that improves profitability of farms and lowers costs to consumers. There are a few exceptions to the "rule" that all co-ops become inefficient, expensive, failures such as the French co-op Limagrain but Limagrain succeeds because it operates as a profit making business and competes locally and globally against private enterprises that force it to be competitive.

Jaoan has lost literally 8,000,000 of their entire population. It peaked in 2010 I think. At now around 120,000,000 and in exponetial population decline, they still can't feed their populace. This means they have serious systemic issues. Stop blaming tourists for your woes Japan.

@2 Year Old

It won’t be difficult to find a suitcase maker in China willing to ship cheap suitcases to you…

Go to any local ethnic food store and get your rice at half price, I am not a rice consumer but I noticed that imported rice from India, Pakistan, Egypt, Indonesia, are almost half the price of locally grown rice!!? and it smells like heaven when cocked, don't know why but it is.