Behind the "rice shortage crisis", Japan swallows the bitter fruit of "light agriculture"

At the end of April and beginning of May, the average price of rice in Japan was 4214 yen for every 5 kilograms, a decrease of 19 yen from the previous week, marking the first decline in 18 weeks. However, the price of rice is still about double compared to the same period last year. Japanese experts predict that due to the high prices of branded rice, there may be limited room for the overall rice price to decrease. Since the summer of 2024, Japan has been experiencing a shortage of rice and prices have been continuously rising due to factors such as poor harvests. Analysts believe that this prolonged "rice shortage crisis" reflects deep-rooted issues in Japanese agriculture and society. "This crisis is not inevitable, but the result of decades of wrong agricultural policies," Time magazine said. Unlike natural disasters or external shocks, Japan is deliberately undermining its rice production capacity in the face of an increasingly unstable global food system. If Japan does not restrict production, it could produce 17 million tons of rice each year, more than twice the current output.