Price of rice in Japan falls below ¥4k per 5kg

Some amount of price control makes sense for strategic defensive reasons: Japan isn't self sufficient in food but like many other economies wants to ensure a viable farming sector.

I'm not sure this amount of price control is needed for that outcome. From TV I get the impression Japanese rice production is pretty intensive, but also small plot focussed so not as efficient as Australia where it's miles and miles of field to the horizon.

Maybe Japanese rice farmers are a protected species?

I'm confused, you open by noting the clear case for protection, and close by asking if protection describes the pricing. Maybe you perceive price controls and protection as separate? Price controls are a way to implement protection.

I'm asking how much. We have a ring-fenced dairy sector and ring fenced apple sector in Australia, biosecurity typically defines the protectionism. We don't pay this level of excess for milk, cheese and apples.

You could give direct income support to rice farmers and not recover it by insane pricing for Japanese rice.

If memory serves, the whale meat was virtually given away but by no means cost nothing to hunt, flense and store.

A better strategic defense would be domestic meat production, with feed that can be diverted to direct human consumption in an emergency. This would build in a large buffer due to the inefficiency of conversion of feed calories to meat calories.

There's nothing wrong with not making your compatriots compete with dirt poor workers elsewhere.

Defensive domestic meat production can't work without other defensive measures. Otherwise, meat producers will just import cost-effective feed from other places, which will shrivel up once geopolitical instability hits.

Farm subsidies does seem like the well tested approach. A lot of people in the US complain about them but I quite like having the option of some ridiculously low cost staples if I'm willing to forgo quality. Placing the burden on the taxpayers as a whole seems like the right approach for things like food security.

Surely you can graze animals in japan?

I don't think just producing meat is enough to stabilize the price of food anywhere.

It helps, reducing most of the need for government intervention, but it doesn't seem to be enough.

Also, it's wasteful, at least from some point of view. You stabilize the price by consuming the excess, but you would still need to survive an eventual shortage. It may not be a huge problem worldwide, but Japan in particular doesn't have a lot of excess capacity.

Normally grazing means grass, which doesn't fit the strategic goal of "feed that can be diverted to direct human consumption in an emergency."

But yes, surely with some combination of taxes, subsidies and there being no better economic use for the land, you can get people to grow soy or barley and feed cattle with it.

The goal wasn't to stabilize prices, but to provide strategic defense against food shortage in emergencies.

If that's your entire goal, it's a bad one. You won't be able to get enough food for your defense during a shortage if the farmers get bankrupt during high-production years.