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The story
Private-sector rice inventories hit a record 2.43 million tons by the end of June, and prices have kept falling. Experts point to the government’s massive release of reserve rice as the cause of the glut, and on 5ch opinion split over how successive agriculture ministers Ishiba, Eto, and Koizumi handled it, and over whether JA (the agricultural co-op) or wholesalers bear the blame.
During the “Reiwa Rice Crisis,” the agricultural cooperatives’ rice collection and distribution practices were repeatedly blamed for driving up prices. But what’s happening now is the reverse: rice wholesalers who bought up 2025-harvest rice at high prices are dumping it at a loss, with some driven out of business or into bankruptcy — while newly harvested rice that has nowhere else to go is flowing back to JA.
Many in the rice industry and among experts point out that the government released far too much reserve rice, flooding the market. Private inventories hit a record 2.43 million tons at the end of June. With the previous year’s rice still piled up as the 2026 harvest comes in, farmers, JA, and wholesalers alike are all left bearing the burden of the collapsing rice price.
Expert commentary and analysis
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
So seriously, who's to blame?
The trash media that hyped it up.
Guess they'll have to kick back plenty to their pet Diet members…
⇒ Re: #14
Pearl Rice and Kotoku Shinryo are both capital-affiliated with JA
"JA Zen-Noh invests in Kotoku Shinryo" — Nikkei
https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXMZO28942700T00C18A4TJ2000/?n_cid=dsapp_share_android
So why do convenience stores only knock 10 yen off, down to 190 yen?
The parent companies of the 'big three' convenience store chains are the 'big three' trading houses — they're deeply embedded in the rice business.
https://imgur.com/nT92gHr.png
The public had already stopped buying rice by last December, yet prices were mysteriously high.
Go find whoever was manipulating the market, you idiots lol
If the provisional payment for the 2027 crop looks like it's heading toward 12,000 yen per 60kg around next June, that's when they should step in.
Current prices aren't exactly cheap as it is.
Yeah, prices are still abnormally high — see Re: #31.
We should keep boycotting for a few more years.
When the reserve rice was released, stores actually had rice on the shelves — it was just expensive.
They released 2,000-yen reserve rice as an election ploy,
but since it wasn't very tasty, it stopped selling within a month.
And then for some reason, people saying stuff like Re: #11 suddenly started popping up all over the internet lol
But they still lost the election lolol
The triple-old rice ("koko-komai") was perfectly edible though?
The people calling it gross probably can't even cook rice properly 🙄
Mixing up your personal opinion with the overall trend…
is that a 🤤 move?
I bought it from 3 or 4 different places and the taste — or really the smell — varied a lot.
The strong-smelling batches were fine once I added a splash of cooking sake though.
So, who screwed up?
If you trace it back, it's the Japan Meteorological Agency for hyping up the Nankai Trough earthquake risk.
That's on Ishiba, Eto, and Koizumi.
Kishida and Sakamoto are the real culprits, but Ishiba and Eto were way too relaxed about it too.
By the time Shinjiro took over it was already late, but the fact that prices dropped this much
is partly thanks to him.
It's less that the reserve rice caused a glut and more that people have simply stopped eating rice.
People just won't buy expensive rice.
Staple food? Never heard of it.
Well, prices for anything other than the reserve rice barely dropped at all.
Wasn't it said the wholesalers and trading companies were hiding stock?
'JA is the villain,' lol.
Both the Ministry of Agriculture and JA itself admit that 'negotiated prices are set by JA's provisional payment amount.'
Don't tell me the answer is just 'supply happened to run short so prices went up.'
During COVID, rice was oversupplied, so they cut production to balance it out — and overdid it.
That's probably not true.
There was actually enough rice.
The data's already out there.
https://www.yomiuri.co.jp/media/2025/09/20250919-OYT1I50097-1.jpg
That's insane.
It was about 4,500 yen in the Kanto region.
Prices vary by region.
Where I live, at its cheapest I could get 5kg for under 2,000 yen.
It's just that the 2025 crop was abnormally expensive — it's still high now.
For reference, here are the provisional payments for the 2023 and 2024 crops
Koshihikari rice, 1,999 yen
New-crop rice, 5kg for 1,980 yen
Kansai really is cheap — new-crop rice going for what the old reserve rice used to cost.
Rice spikes your blood sugar fast, so it'll give you diabetes.
Three times a week is about my limit for pasta.
Gotta expand my sauce repertoire or I get sick of it.
Background and Key Points
The Japanese government has held an emergency rice reserve since the 1990s, built after the 1993 crop failure, meant to be released only in genuine shortages. The 2024–25 “Reiwa Rice Crisis” saw retail prices roughly double amid poor 2023 harvests, panic buying tied to a Nankai Trough earthquake warning, and rising inbound tourism demand. Agriculture minister Eto Taku resigned after a gaffe about receiving free rice from supporters; his successor, Koizumi Shinjiro, broke with the reserve’s traditional buyback rules and sold it off in bulk, competitively priced, which crashed prices fast and boosted his popularity. JA (Japan’s agricultural cooperative network) still dominates the supply chain: it collects rice from farmers and pays them a “provisional payment” (gaisan-kin) before final settlement, a figure that effectively sets the wholesale price floor nationwide — the mechanism posters allude to in #154, not simple hoarding.
The thread doesn’t converge on one villain. Some blame JA and wholesalers for opportunistic pricing during the shortage; others blame Ishiba, Eto, and Koizumi for releasing reserves too late and then too aggressively, causing today’s glut; a third strand blames the media, or simply falling consumption as households shift to pasta and bread.
What’s missing is the boom-bust pattern this repeats: Japan has cut rice acreage for decades to prop up prices, so a shortage triggers overcorrection and vice versa. With wholesalers now going bankrupt selling 2025 stock at a loss and 2026 harvest already piling up, farmers face weak provisional payments again — likely seeding the next planting cutback and, eventually, the next shortage.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Express+) thread “Behind the Rice Price Crash: Koizumi’s Reserve Rice Release Hailed a Win — the ‘Flooding Operation’.”
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