Q: Keywords like "Reiwa rice riots" and "Koizumi rice" are making waves in the media, but it seems like a lie that until recently people were saying that Japanese people were turning away from rice. Even if the government were to release its stockpiled rice, I feel that this would not solve the fundamental problem of "logistics congestion."
Toshinao Sasaki (hereafter Sasaki): People often talk about it from a culprit-finding perspective, saying things like dealers are buying up all the rice or the JA (agricultural cooperatives) are blocking distribution, but I feel that in reality, a variety of factors are at play. The rice passes through multiple intermediaries before reaching stores. However, it seems that the current rice shortage isn't necessarily caused by a complex distribution structure alone.
The "crop condition index," which serves as a guide to rice harvest yields, predicted a rice shortage in 2023, but the index for 2024 was over 100, suggesting that the harvest would be above average. In reality, the rice shortage has not been resolved. Speaking to rice farmers, they said that in 2024, rice grains were small and many were discarded during sorting during milling, so the actual harvest was worse than the apparent crop condition index suggested.
There's also a change in the structure of rice consumption. Rice is generally thought of as the staple food of the Japanese, but currently, more wheat than rice is consumed in Japan. From the perspective of food self-sufficiency, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries has a strong desire to prioritize and protect domestically produced rice. This is why they have implemented price manipulation measures that ignore the market, such as the "rice production reduction policy." Rice prices have been in an unnatural state for a long time. In the midst of this, the media widely reported on the rice shortage two years ago, and as a result, people who had not consumed much rice up until then all started buying rice at once. The supply and demand balance collapsed, and this is probably what led to the current situation.
