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The story
Miyata, chairman of the prefectural JA (Japan Agricultural Cooperatives) Group, has proposed 3,500 yen per 5kg as a price both producers and consumers could accept, while also hinting at a major cut to the advance payments made to farmers. On 5channel, reactions ranged from defenders saying “they just want to make JA the villain,” to posts describing the reality of rice oversupply and users’ own declining rice consumption, to suspicion about why prices aren’t actually falling.
What people said
Miyata, chairman of the prefectural JA Group, hinted at a major reduction in the "advance payment" — the sum paid to farmers when purchasing their rice.
■Koichi Miyata, Chairman of the Prefectural JA Group
They just really want to paint JA as some evil organization no matter what.
The ones doing wrong are the parasites — JA's just the host.
From a consumer's perspective, they ARE the evil organization though.
・Shut down the rice futures market
・Handle Norinchukin Bank's losses by either cutting them loose or shifting to state support
Do all that first before you start lecturing us about rice prices.
It's less about middlemen skimming and more about upstream players hoarding stock to jack up prices.
The idea that Japanese people are eating less rice is honestly shocking.
Japan already eats way less rice than other Asian countries, comparatively.
Such a waste, seriously.
Getting numb to it like that is scary.
Convenience store onigiri sales volume has plummeted across every chain over the past few years.
But sweets and bread sales have been climbing steadily instead, so the price hikes haven't actually hurt the convenience stores.
That stuff is way too good — whenever I get a craving for rice, one bowl of it kills the urge instantly.
Lol, that's literally still rice (beefun is made from rice flour).
In reality, the 2024 harvest was actually bigger than the previous year's:
2023: 7.166 million tons
2024: 7.346 million tons ← the 'rice shortage' started in July
2025: 7.468 million tons
And yet it got spun as the worst rice shortage in history, and the price of a 10kg bag tripled.
What's really scary is that when the new-crop rice harvested in September 2024 and September 2025 hit the market, prices didn't drop — they kept climbing. That can only mean price manipulation.
Prices finally peaked on January 4, 2026, and have been falling since.
Cold damage is a real risk for rice, but heat really isn't.
A crop that grows just fine across Southeast Asia obviously isn't weak to heat.
No exaggeration, my stomach literally can't handle rice like it used to.
Even with a set meal, a small rice portion is just right for me now.
This is dead serious.
Back in my teens and twenties I could put away like 2 gou (roughly 2 cups of uncooked rice) in one meal.
Now even a single bowl feels heavy, so I'd rather have less.
So what are all these people who claim they've quit rice actually eating?
Probably single guys living alone.
There's no way a parent with kids thinks 'rice got expensive, so let's switch to pasta!' — feeding boys pasta costs more than rice does anyway.
Just sell it for 3,500 yen if that's what they want — no one's stopping them.
The problem is that with the current massive oversupply, nobody's buying at that price — hence the griping. Consumers aren't on board with it.
https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/95285f23377fff5bd4d1cd53f4bc483842a81b1b
The rice glut is hitting farmers hard.
Standard Koshihikari, the most widely traded variety, has fallen from ¥30,000 per 60kg in 2025 to ¥18,500.
Similarly, 'Shinnosuke' has dropped from ¥31,000 in 2025 to ¥19,000 — both declines of roughly 40%.
That's the largest drop on record.
■'More Farmers May Quit Farming'
The cause is the rice glut.
After record price surges, huge amounts of the 2025 harvest are still sitting unsold.
I've eaten it twice and it's tasty.
If nobody told me, I don't think I could tell it apart from domestic rice.
Lol, you've just been eating bad rice every day.
No wonder you can't tell the difference.
Background and Key Points
JA — the Japan Agricultural Cooperatives group — is not one company but a nationwide federation of regional co-ops that collects rice from member farmers, markets it, and fronts them money before the crop is even sold. That upfront sum is the “advance payment” (仮払金/概算金): a provisional per-bag price paid at harvest, settled later once JA knows what it actually earned reselling the rice. When chairman Miyata floats ¥3,500 per 5kg as fair and hints at cutting that advance, he’s really talking about lowering what farmers get guaranteed now, not announcing a retail price cut. This matters against the backdrop of Japan’s 2024-2025 “rice crisis,” when bag prices roughly tripled even though harvest tonnage rose every year from 2023 to 2025 (7.166m → 7.346m → 7.468m tons) — a mismatch between reported shortage and actual supply that fueled talk of hoarding or manipulation further up the distribution chain, with prices only turning down after peaking around January 4, 2026.
The thread’s real fault line isn’t for-or-against farmers; it’s whether JA is the culprit or merely the visible face of a system where futures markets, middlemen, and Norinchukin Bank’s own losses shape prices upstream, versus posters who think falling consumption (less rice eaten per meal, more bread/sweets, cheap imported rice) is the actual driver of the current glut.
What outsiders often miss is that JA doesn’t set consumer prices directly — supermarkets and wholesalers do — so a “fair price” pledge from JA leadership is a negotiating signal to its own farmer members and buyers, not a price control announcement, which is why posters kept asking why shelf prices weren’t moving even as JA talked numbers.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5channel (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “JA Chairman: ‘Rice at 3,500 yen per 5kg is a price producers and consumers can accept. Below that, it’s hard to sell.’“.
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