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The story
It emerged on the 31st that Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries has decided to buy back 210,000 tons of the government rice reserves it released in 2025. The ministry had initially set aside funds in the FY2026 budget to repurchase 150,000 tons, but expanded the amount in light of private-sector rice stockpiles hitting a record high; a negotiated (non-competitive) contract is expected to be finalized on September 18. On 5ch’s news board, users debated the sequence of events involving Agriculture Ministers Eto, Koizumi, and Suzuki in handling prices at the time of the release, as well as where responsibility for the price surge really lies.
Mon, Aug 31, 3:27 PM
Kyodo News
A policy proposal from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries concerning the government’s rice reserves came to light on the 31st. Its centerpiece is buying back 210,000 tons of the reserve rice released in 2025 to restore stockpile levels, with a negotiated contract to be carried out on September 18. The FY2026 budget had set aside funds to repurchase 150,000 tons, but that has been expanded to 210,000 tons in light of private-sector rice inventories reaching a record high. A final decision will be made based on the nationwide harvest outlook due to be released on the evening of the 31st, with an official announcement expected soon.
Source: topics.smt.docomo.ne.jp / Original article here
What people said
Separate from this article, contracts for 207,521 tons of reserve rice purchases were already signed by June 9, with deliveries starting in September lol
https://imgur.com/PmhK2Q1.jpeg
Still way too expensive
Fine if they go under. From a poor person's point of view it doesn't affect the food self-sufficiency rate one bit anyway.
The cost figures JA puts out are based on part-timers farming postage-stamp-sized paddies. Isn't it about time high-cost farms got weeded out?
They're just buying it back with the money from selling it earlier. It's not like they're spending fresh tax revenue.
It's not the reserve release that's the problem — it's JA hoarding it. In the worst cases they had a 90% lock on supply.
Eto initially sold the reserve rice to JA, but middlemen hoarded all of it and none reached the market. Prices only started falling once Koizumi began selling directly to retailers, no?
That actually helped a lot. Average rice prices dropped too once the reserve rice went out. And yet Suzuki claimed rice vouchers would be faster than reserve releases, halted the releases, promised to hand out vouchers to the public — and then never actually did. That's what triggered the price spike and people giving up on rice.
The released reserve rice ("Eto rice") gets bought up at inflated prices
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Then shipments get throttled to jack the price back up
Maybe it's because they took a huge hit on US Treasuries?
It's less that they're profiting and more that JA and the wholesalers just don't want to book a loss. Farmers are stuck bringing in the new harvest at cheap prices no matter what.
🤔
Go study food security from the ground up before you post that. You'll understand all too well how foolish that comment was. Scrawling toilet graffiti isn't going to change the world, and nobody's taking you seriously.
If you actually understood food security, you'd immediately see that the Japanese government — which clung to price controls even while cutting rice acreage — never cared about food security in the first place.
Because that's the will of the people in this country. Go look at the Yahoo News comments — nothing but hatred directed at rice farmers. We should just grant that wish, even if it means the public ends up starving.
Come on… It's already this much of a mess in peacetime. It'll be absolutely useless in a real crisis. Fuel and fertilizer are both imported to begin with — if there's ever a naval blockade, we're finished regardless. "Food security" is nothing but an empty slogan.
"Buying back rice with tax money is about to seriously blow up into a huge scandal lol" [2ch Roundup] [2ch Thread] [5ch Thread] – Honne News Flash
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCQA6vSZrhw
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/bSdulDS18aY/maxresdefault.jpg
It's just that the plan to buy back the 800,000 tons released, spread over five years, got bumped up a bit. Also, sure, raising the price at release time would've shrunk the buyback gap — but selling it high back then would've defeated the whole purpose, so this outcome was baked in from the start.
The ones you should be cursing are JA, the wholesalers, the Ministry of Agriculture, and the government. What's the point of cursing the farmers?
Throw the US in there too. The whole reason Norinchukin Bank loaded up on US bonds traces back to the Uruguay Round in the first place.
Caught flashing a glimpse of his luxury watch
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
The government released reserve rice in 2025 in response to soaring prices. It was initially distributed through wholesalers under then-Agriculture Minister Eto but failed to reach the market in sufficient volume; prices only came down after his successor, Minister Koizumi, switched to selling directly to retailers. This buyback is part of an already-planned process to gradually restore that released stock, and the funding comes from the proceeds of the original sale rather than new tax spending — a point that’s easily misread. Thread participants were split over who bears responsibility for the price surge — farmers, JA, wholesalers, or the Ministry of Agriculture — and over whether public spending on agriculture is justified on food-security grounds. Notably, the debate centered less on whether reserves themselves are worthwhile and more on who should bear the resulting gains and losses.
*This article is composed from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (News Express+) thread “[Rice] 210,000 Tons of Reserve Rice Buyback — Agriculture Ministry to Finalize Contract on the 18th.”
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