Due to high rice prices and tight supplies, the Japanese government will release 210,000 tons of rice from reserve stocks.
This will be the first time that the Japanese government has used its reserve stocks to lower market prices, not due to a state of emergency.
“Japanese farmers have produced enough rice to meet demand. However, a bottleneck has appeared in the distribution system, meaning rice is only available to buyers at high prices,” Agriculture Minister Taku Eto said on Friday.
According to the Agriculture Ministry, the amount of rice produced in 2024 increased by 180,000 tons compared to the previous year. However, the amount that distributors such as state-owned agricultural cooperatives were able to collect by December fell by 210,000 tons, The Japan Times reported.
“The difference is due to more speculative buyers entering the market, trying to take advantage of the rice shortage and push up the price,” said Masayuki Ogawa, a researcher in agricultural economics at Uconomiya University.
Japan experienced a rice shortage last summer, but prices were expected to normalize. However, they have remained high due to speculators, and higher profits have not been passed on to producers, Ogawa added.
“We want to improve distribution and hope that this will help calm rising prices,” said Minister Eto.
The agriculture ministry plans to buy back the amount of rice within a year.
The agriculture ministry introduced the reserve stock system in 1995, after an unusually cold summer in Japan caused a major rice shortage two years earlier. Each year, it buys back about 200,000 tons of rice, which it stores for five years, so there is always a million tons of rice in reserve stocks.
Photo: KyodoNews
