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

(www.japantimes.co.jp)
126 points PaulHoule | 7 comments | 30 Jun 25 19:54 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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ggm ◴[30 Jun 25 23:36 UTC] No.44429069[source]▶
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?

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1. pfdietz ◴[01 Jul 25 00:36 UTC] No.44429430[source]▶
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.
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2. gottorf ◴[01 Jul 25 01:10 UTC] No.44429598[source]▶
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.
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3. LAC-Tech ◴[01 Jul 25 03:44 UTC] No.44430383[source]▶
Surely you can graze animals in japan?
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4. marcosdumay ◴[01 Jul 25 04:01 UTC] No.44430476[source]▶
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.

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5. dmurray ◴[01 Jul 25 04:23 UTC] No.44430577{3}[source]▶
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.

6. pfdietz ◴[01 Jul 25 10:28 UTC] No.44432425[source]▶
The goal wasn't to stabilize prices, but to provide strategic defense against food shortage in emergencies.
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7. marcosdumay ◴[01 Jul 25 15:55 UTC] No.44435188{3}[source]▶
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.