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The story
At an August 20 press conference, Yoshihito Shinno, chairman of the JA National Central Union (Zenchu), stressed that rice farming will decline unless prices remain high enough for farmers to sustain production, once again voicing alarm over Japan’s falling food self-sufficiency rate.
In the thread, the view that “the market should decide prices” drew worries about becoming dependent on imported rice, while opinions clashed head-on between those defending farmers and market-principle advocates over whether to consolidate farmland or introduce subsidies.
At his August 20 press conference, JA Zenchu chairman Yoshihito Shinno said of rice, “I feel a real sense of crisis that rice farming will decline unless prices stay at a level that lets farmers keep growing rice sustainably going forward,” once again underscoring the importance of prices that allow for reproduction of the crop.
Provisional payment prices for the 2026 rice crop continue to be announced region by region. Chairman Shinno noted that these provisional price levels vary by growing region, sales channel, and intended use, and said the JA Group needs to “work toward the final settlement,” calling for continued sales efforts. He added that the group wants to “pursue measures that keep supply and demand in balance,” signaling that improving the sales environment remains a priority.
He also pointed out that, before the rice shortage sparked what’s been dubbed the “Reiwa Rice Riots,” prices had stayed below the level needed to sustain production for a long stretch. Calling it “groundbreaking” that a “cost index” was created and published under the Food System Act, he reiterated the need for fair price formation, saying, “Unless the final settlement price lets rice farming continue sustainably, the industry will decline.”
Source: jacom.or.jp / Original article here
What people said
End of story.
It'll end up being nothing but imported rice — and when we can't import it anymore, guess you're fine with starving to death?
Sounds like something straight out of the Agriculture Minister's mouth.
If you want to raise self-sufficiency, the only way is to subsidize agricultural corporations so they can produce at close to international prices.
Exactly right!
So let's flood the market with California rice!
Isn't that minimum-access rice? (rice imported under Japan's WTO minimum-import-quota system)
It's probably mostly for processed products.
I went to Trial once but they don't take credit cards, so I stopped going. People on Girls Channel (a women's forum) were saying it's not that cheap either.
A Trial opened near me but it was only cheap at first. It's not cheap anymore so I stopped going.
Trying to have everyone brand their rice and jack up the added value like that — seriously, only Japan does that.
A healthy market has both cheap and expensive options.
Forcing everything to be expensive and telling people they have to buy pricey rice is a deranged idea.
There are varieties that are way easier to mass-produce, you know.
Meanwhile overseas, buying it cheap is just the norm.
If you want to earn a living as a full-time farmer, grow vegetables or fruit instead.
It's not few at all.
There's an endless amount of work — water management alone can't be skipped for even a single day.
If you've got complaints, just quit already.
Give up the farmland — plenty of people would take your place.
Then quit. Nobody's stopping you.
That would disqualify about 30% of all paddies, which would help balance supply and demand and boost efficiency all at once.
Senmaida terraced rice fields be like, 'You looking for a fight?' (Senmaida = famous tiny terraced paddies, the opposite of large rectangular plots)
Most paddies in the Uonuma region are only about 2 tan, so that would wipe out Uonuma Koshihikari entirely.
They were divided into plots that size decades ago, though — improvement work could expand them to around 1 hectare.
Fine if you're one of the elite, but if you're not, securing food is the top priority.
If food stops coming into Japan, it's the most vulnerable people who starve to death first.
If food stops coming into Japan, will we even be able to eat rice?
The LDP has zero intention of doing anything like that lol.
Now they're talking about deregulating potato-based rice next.
The moment you leave prices entirely to the market, security goes out the window.
Prices already more than doubled in peacetime — there's no way current policy holds up in an actual crisis. Are you stupid?
That's a whole different can of worms.
Apparently convenience stores bought their stock in last year.
Because everything else has gone up too.
subsidize farmers like the US and Europe do, and protect primary industry.
Food supply is one of the most critical pieces of infrastructure there is — it's the foundation of life itself.
The LDP: 'I said no, didn't I!'
How much per hour in subsidies do American rice farmers actually get?
This country's national character rejects farm subsidies on principle, so I think that's never going to happen.
Provisional payments for the 2023 and 2024 crops
Background and Key Points
JA Zenchu is the national umbrella body for Japan’s agricultural cooperatives (JA), the politically powerful network that has shaped rice policy since the postwar land reforms and still channels subsidies, credit, and collective bargaining for most of the country’s small-scale farmers. Japan’s calorie-based food self-sufficiency rate sits around 38%, among the lowest of any wealthy nation, and rice is the one staple where the figure is still close to 100% — which is precisely why Zenchu treats rice as the last line of defense for food security rather than just another commodity. The “Reiwa rice riots” refer to the 2024-2025 shortage and price spike that exposed how thin that buffer really is, and the “cost index” under the new Food System Act is a government attempt to formally tie the price farmers receive to their actual production costs, something Japan has never codified before.
The thread’s real fault line isn’t pro- or anti-farmer sentiment in the abstract; it’s whether market pricing and structural reform (consolidating tiny, irregularly shaped paddies into efficient large plots) can raise yields enough to make subsidies unnecessary, versus whether Japan needs direct income support like the US and EU provide, since without it market prices alone may not cover the labor-intensive daily work (irrigation, pest management) that smaller farms require.
What the thread never addresses is minimum-access rice — roughly 770,000 tonnes Japan is obligated to import annually under WTO rules, mostly funneled into processed foods like the dango flour posters puzzled over, not sold as table rice. That quota already represents quiet, structural dependence on imports, independent of whatever domestic pricing policy Zenchu pursues.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Breaking News Plus) thread: [SDGs] Rice Prices Need to Support Sustainable Farming — JA Zenchu Chairman Shinno Warns of Record-Low Self-Sufficiency
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