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The story
A survey by Teikoku Databank has found that closures and bankruptcies among rice farming operations are running at a record pace. Just from January to August 2026, there were already 32 cases, with some citing an aging workforce and recent declines in rice prices as reasons the business “no longer adds up.” However, the count mainly covers agricultural corporations tracked by the firm, and doesn’t include individual farmers who quietly leave the industry. On 5ch, users debated whether the figure seemed too low given Japan’s roughly 1.7 million rice-farming households, pointed out that the tally may be limited to corporations, and discussed the land-consolidation issues holding back large-scale farming.
Published 9/9 (Wed) 11:29
FNN Prime Online (Fuji TV Network)
Closures and bankruptcies of “rice farms” are running at elevated levels.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Punch yourself first.
I'm working part-time on a farm right now, and even guys in their 30s and 40s get treated like kids. When I'm out working the field, the old farmers next door fuss over me constantly, for better or worse.
It'd need to be 320,000 before the tariffs go away.
Even if it really were 6,400 hectares total, that's under 4,000 tons of output — basically a rounding error against Japan's 7-million-ton total production. And these are probably small operations anyway, so it might not even add up to 64 hectares.
Something's off with these stats.
I looked it up and Japan supposedly has 1.7 million rice-farming households, so something doesn't add up.
That's because this only counts corporations.
Individual farmers who quietly quit aren't included.
The moment rice prices drop they'll pull out instantly,
and you'll end up with huge stretches of abandoned farmland.
That won't happen — the Farmland Act regulates against it.
Not rice, but companies like Kagome and Watami got into farming when regulations were eased —
most of them pulled out again within just a few years.
The government steps in and releases stockpiled rice whenever prices get high, so personally I'd never invest in rice farming.
but I bet abandoned plots are scattered around everywhere like missing teeth, so consolidation probably isn't happening anyway.
Then again, a lot of it is heavily reworked terraced paddies or some old guy's quarter-acre plot — plenty of places where there's no way to consolidate.
And scattered, non-contiguous paddies are nothing but a liability.
Feels like it should be way more than that.
Most of it's just natural attrition, right.
It's Teikoku Databank, so that's the count of agricultural corporations.
If rice stays cheap, no new farmers will move onto that vacated land, and growing vegetables takes manpower, so you'll need everyone's favorite Nguyễn to lend a hand (a common nickname for Vietnamese migrant farm workers).
Even among the Nguyễns, farm work isn't popular.
Or was it manageable because costs were lower too?
Forget a few years ago, prices were the same even 20 years ago.
Right, so that means before the recent price spike it was cheaper than now —
so 5 years ago, 10 years ago, even 20 years ago, it was all cheaper than today.
Isn't that abnormal though?
Is there any other food like that?
Probably the big farms absorbing the small ones.
TDB mainly tracks corporations and companies.
Some of them paid off debts during last year's price spike and dissolved the company.
Maybe [farm minister] Shinjiro's massive stockpile release was the final push.
Feels like corporate farm dissolutions are going to keep climbing over the next couple of years.
The public seems fine with that, so what can you do.
If oil stops flowing first, people will die even faster than that.
If it ever got that bad, they'd only sell to the rich anyway —
just look at last year's rice panic to see how that goes.
Background and key points of this discussion
The bankruptcy/closure statistics Teikoku Databank compiles for “agricultural corporations” only cover businesses organized as corporations, and in principle exclude closures among Japan’s roughly 1.7 million individually-run rice farming households. Many in the thread found the figure of 32 cases suspiciously low, but this is largely explained by that difference in scope. Rice prices stayed largely flat for a long stretch before the recent sharp rise, and a structure that makes it hard to pass rising costs on to consumers has squeezed rice farmers’ income. Large-scale consolidation of farmland is also held back by the large amount of land left in unfavorable conditions, such as terraced paddies and scattered, non-contiguous plots — as posters pointed out, this isn’t something simple mergers can fix. How to sustain Japan’s rice production base is directly tied to the long-term challenge posed by a structure centered on family farming and an aging pool of successors.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Express+) thread “[Rice] Rice farmer closures/bankruptcies at record pace — 32 cases in the first 8 months of this year, with some citing “the business doesn’t add up” amid aging and falling rice prices.”
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