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The story
On September 3, Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) released an analysis of demand trends for domestically produced staple rice. While consumption of domestic rice has fallen amid the price spikes that followed the “Reiwa Rice Crisis,” the ministry suggested this may reflect a shift toward cheaper foreign rice rather than an overall drop in rice consumption, stating it is “hard to identify an overall declining trend in rice consumption.” The thread filled up with personal accounts of cooking rice at home less often, photo reports of last year’s rice sitting unsold at supermarkets even after price cuts, and pointed questions about the government buying up reserve rice at high prices — along with conflicting figures over whether the 2025 planted acreage actually increased, all feeding distrust in the government’s explanation itself.
Thu, Sep 3, 15:56
Kyodo News
Have consumers really turned their backs on rice? By September 3, Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries had released a new analysis of demand trends for domestically produced staple rice. While consumption of domestic rice declined amid price hikes following the “Reiwa Rice Crisis,” the ministry said this may reflect a shift toward cheaper foreign rice, concluding it is “hard to identify an overall declining trend in rice consumption.”
Source: topics.smt.docomo.ne.jp / Original article here
What people said
It'd at least have to be cheaper than pasta before I'd consider buying it
It's not bad at all, honestly
Either you're eating some seriously awful rice or you grew up overseas, I don't know
July 29, 2026
<Japan's Rice> Rice demand hits record low — imports drag volume down 280,000 tons
https://www.agrinews.co.jp/news/index/396733
Foreign rice spreads into homes and restaurants, imports up 50x since the rice crisis — dark clouds over food security
August 21, 2026 5:00 [Subscriber-only article]
https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQOUA217U70R20C26A7000000/
If you tweak how you cook it, the base rice barely matters either way
Add some umami and oil and pretty much any rice becomes decent enough to eat
Maybe once a month I'll grab an Onigiri Q at Sundai (a discount supermarket chain)
I did quit eating out though
Why does the first line start off talking about the big picture and then end up being just your personal story?
Sushiro's opening a branch in New York anyway
Japanese rice exports are actually on the rise
but onigiri are too expensive now
A political failure
Convenience store bread is basically candy at this point
Last year's rice crop
Even at a fire-sale price under 2,000 yen, nobody's buying
Piled up and unsold
Nobody's buying
Seiyu
i.imgur.com/uHDr6q3.jpeg
i.imgur.com/tzsZFQq.jpeg
And yet they want to get the government to buy it up at a premium
Rice wholesalers are garbage — and so is MAFF
Last year's Koshihikari
Even under 2,000 yen, nobody's buying
Piled up and unsold
Japan Meat
but at least don't put one on indica rice
I'm all for zero tariffs on indica rice specifically
It's not really competing with domestic rice anyway
Everyone keeps saying it tastes bad, so what's the harm
New-crop rice starts at 1,780 yen — how low will it go?
New-crop rice wouldn't move at 1,999 yen, marked down to 1,850 — Don Quijote
And alcohol is fuel
Some countries actually do that, but with a cost-performance gap of 10x or more, how would that even compete?
Just turn it into sake instead
You can export that, can't you
isn't that exactly what you'd call a 'rice exodus'?
Beef bowl chains switched straight back to domestic rice the moment prices came back down to a reasonable range
They never wanted to use foreign rice for any reason besides cost
'Rice is Japan's staple food, so people have no choice but to buy it no matter how expensive it gets'
…that's the delusion some idiot was banking on when they screwed this up
Especially sushi or convenience-store bento and onigiri — you have no idea what's going on behind the scenes these days
Too many attention-seekers and 'part-timer terrorism' incidents (staff filming themselves messing with food) — no thanks, I'll get sick
So you don't care what happens behind the scenes with wheat or potatoes then? (lol)
By that logic you couldn't eat anything unless you were fully self-sufficient
Good luck with that, you cynic
With the Expo going on, it was probably a convenient excuse for whoever was pulling the strings
Look at the year-by-year production figures — it's nowhere near a bad enough harvest to double or triple prices, way too unnatural
The logic just doesn't hold together
Demand for domestic rice has stayed flat, but since it was selling at high prices, farmers ramped up production hard and now there's a glut
MAFF actually tried to hold back the increase in anticipation of this, and got slammed for it…
They didn't increase production at all — they were running the acreage-reduction policy until just recently
The 2025 crop saw a major production increase (up 108,000 hectares year-over-year)
Takaichi called a halt to the production increase, but farmers ramped up anyway, betting on high prices
Middlemen skimming their cut, slurping it right up (a jab at intermediaries siphoning off profits)
Background and Key Points of This Topic
The “Reiwa Rice Crisis” refers to the turmoil in which domestic rice prices spiked amid harvest concerns from the extreme heat since 2024 and bottlenecks in distribution. MAFF’s latest analysis argues that even though consumption of domestic rice has fallen, that doesn’t necessarily mean people are abandoning “rice as a staple food” altogether — it may simply reflect a shift toward foreign rice. That distinction matters, since the headline alone is easy to misread as denying any decline in domestic rice consumption at all. In the thread, photo reports of domestic rice sitting unsold at supermarkets even after price cuts were set against cited news of a sharp rise in foreign rice imports, splitting opinion over whether MAFF’s explanation reflects reality or is just political cover. There was also back-and-forth citing specific figures over whether the 2025 planted acreage actually expanded, suggesting that even the interpretation of the government’s own statistics isn’t unanimous.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “[Rice] MAFF: “Hard to Confirm a Rice Exodus” — Analysis of Domestic Demand Trends, Possible Rise in Foreign Rice“.
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