Latest news with #Japonica
The Mainichi
3 days ago
- Business
- The Mainichi
More Japanese consumers in Gunma Pref. turning to foreigner-owned shops for rice
An increasing number of Japanese consumers in Gunma Prefecture, which has one of the highest ratios of foreign residents per unit of population in the country, were seen turning to foreign-owned stores to buy imported rice amid high prices and shortages of the grain in early June. In the prefecture, many shops and convenience stores operated by individuals from Asia and South America offer rice from countries such as Thailand and India. Since the outbreak of a rice crisis last summer, more Japanese customers have apparently been purchasing these products. At Alh Mini Mart and Restaurant in the city of Tatebayashi, more than 10 varieties of rice from countries such as Thailand and Pakistan are sold. According to Aung Tin, a member of the Rohingya Muslim minority from Myanmar who manages the establishment, most buyers were initially foreigners from Myanmar and other countries, but the number of Japanese customers has increased since last year. California rice is also sold at this store. Not only is Japonica rice, commonly consumed by Japanese people, selling well at the store, but so is the long-grain Indica rice. The basmati variety is often used in biryani -- a dish where rice and meat are cooked with spices. Biryani is served at the restaurant attached to the store. Aung Tin shared a cooking tip, saying, "We layer cooked rice and ingredients in a commercial rice cooker and steam them. The key is to keep the rice firm when cooking." According to the Gunma Prefectural Government, as of the end of December 2024, there were 81,396 foreign residents in Gunma, accounting for 4.3% of the prefecture's population. This ratio is among the highest in Japan, alongside Tokyo and Aichi Prefecture. The increase in stores and restaurants run by Vietnamese and Nepalese people has made foreign rice more accessible. At the south exit of JR Maebashi Station, where Japanese language schools operate and students take buses to part-time jobs, the convenience store Chyandora sells jasmine rice produced in Thailand and Vietnam. While 70% of the customers are foreigners, roughly 30% are Japanese. Neupane Bhesham Raj, a Nepalese representative director, noted, "With the rise in rice prices in Japan, purchases by Japanese customers significantly increased." The Vietnamese Japonica rice is particularly popular among Japanese customers. "The taste is quite similar to Japanese rice," he said. Private imports also spiked. Beliatta Lanka Co., a wholesaler and retailer in Bando, Ibaraki Prefecture, imports rice for Chyandora. Beliatta Lanka pays a tariff of 341 yen (some $2.30) per kilogram for private imports. The company's Sri Lankan representative director stated, "The demand for foreign rice is increasing, and retail prices are also rising." (Japanese original by Tetsuya Shoji, Maebashi Bureau)
Japan Today
06-07-2025
- Business
- Japan Today
In reversal, Japan now wants rice farmers to produce more. Will it work?
By Kaori Kaneko For more than half a century, the Japanese government has encouraged its rice farmers to grow less of the crop so that prices of the national staple grain remained relatively high and steady. Now, under an ambitious agricultural policy announced this year, Tokyo is preparing for a reversal, envisaging a future of bountiful output that would secure the country's food security without sending prices into freefall and hurting its politically influential farmers. The new direction has taken on an unexpected urgency as Japanese grapple with a shortage of the all-important staple, which has prompted a historic spike in prices, a flood of imports, and interest from President Donald Trump, who has renewed pressure on Japan to buy U.S. rice as part of the allies' elusive trade deal. Kazuhachi Hosaka looks at his rice farm in Joetsu, Niigata Prefecture. Image: REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon It is a policy that many farmers like Kazuhachi Hosaka welcome in principle, but with trepidation because questions over how it would work in practice remain unanswered. The government is aiming to complete a roadmap by the middle of next year. "We'd want the government to make sure there's some kind of a safety net for producers," Hosaka said at his farm in the northern prefecture of Niigata. "It's easy enough to switch rice for feed or processed foods to staple rice. But tilling land for new paddies or switching from wheat or soybeans would require labour, machinery and all kinds of investments." This year, Hosaka allocated all but 10 hectares (25 acres) of his 180-hectare land for staple rice, reducing feed-use rice by 20 hectares given the attractive prices. But he worries that prices could plunge if Japan's overall production goes unchecked under the new policy, set to be implemented from the 2027 crop year. "I do feel conflicted," Hosaka said about the doubling of retail rice prices to above 4,000 yen for a 5kg bag this year in what has turned into a national crisis. "It's important that rice prices settle at levels acceptable to both producers and consumers," he said. Hosaka hopes prices would stabilise around 3,000 to 3,500 yen - a level Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba also hopes would be palatable for voters. Supermarket prices fell for a fifth straight week, to 3,801 yen in the seven days to June 22, but were still 70% higher than the same period last year. Rice paddies in Joetsu, Niigata Prefecture Image: REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon NATIONAL CRISIS For Japanese people, rice is more than just a staple food. Cultivated in the country for more than 2,000 years, rice is considered sacred in the indigenous Shinto religion and is deeply ingrained in local tradition and culture. The Japanese are famously proud of their short-grain Japonica variety, protecting the market with trade barriers. So when rice turned into a luxury item this year, consumers fumed and policymakers - facing imminent elections - worried. With an eye on voters ahead of an upper house election on July 20, the government has been releasing emergency rice from its stockpile to sell for about 2,000 yen per 5 kg. Farmers - also traditionally an important voting bloc for Ishiba's Liberal Democratic Party - were told it was a dire but necessary move to protect Japan's food security and prevent consumers from switching permanently away from homegrown rice. But for most of the past 50 years, Japan has poured its energy into doing the opposite: providing subsidies to farmers to grow crops other than staple rice so as to prevent oversupply and a fall in prices. That system backfired last year when the farm ministry misread supply from the heat-damaged 2023 harvest, resulting in a severe shortage in August. The ensuing surge in prices made Japan an anomaly against a fall in global prices, and exposed the risks of its approach. The new policy, if successful, would prevent a recurrence by allocating 350,000 tons of rice for export in 2030 - an eight-fold jump from 45,000 tons last year - that could be redirected to the domestic market in the event of a shortage, the government says. Some agricultural experts say the policy is unrealistic. The idea of selling expensive Japanese rice abroad is counterintuitive, especially when even Japan is importing record amounts of the grain despite the 341 yen per kg levy that had previously priced foreign products out of the market. Japanese have also acquired a taste for U.S. Calrose rice, while imports from Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam have also been popular with businesses and cost-conscious consumers. "Expensive rice might sell to niche markets, but getting that up to 350,000 tons would require price competitiveness, and there's a long way for that," said Kazunuki Ohizumi, professor emeritus at Miyagi University and an expert on agricultural management. The government aims to provide some form of support but also expects farmers to make their own efforts to consolidate, and make use of artificial intelligence and other technologies to lower production costs. Meanwhile, Hosaka said, prices of fertilizers, pesticides and fuel have shot up, sending production costs through the roof. "It's tough," he said. "The government has released quite a bit of stockpiled rice, so I'm very worried about prices falling even further." © Thomson Reuters 2025.
Time of India
06-07-2025
- Science
- Time of India
Southeast Asia: ‘Rice was grown 10,000 years ago — it first linked India and Southeast Asia'
Dorian Q. Fuller is Professor of Archaeobotany at University College London. Speaking to Srijana Mitra Das at Times Evoke, he discusses rice's roots: What is the core of your research? I am both an archaeologist and a botanist. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now I collaborate on archaeological excavation projects where we recover preserved plant remains, consisting of the remnants of crops, weeds and wild, gathered foods as well as the wood fuel people used for cooking and fires. From that, we study which crops existed in past cultures and different places and how agriculture, plants and the human diet have changed. Where was the earliest evidence of cultivated rice found? First, I should specify there are two distinct species of rice. There's an African rice, cultivated traditionally in parts of West Africa which has a separate origin, and there's Asian rice, grown in India, China, Japan, etc. Within Asian cultivated rice, there are two subspecies — Indica and Japonica, the former more dominant in South Asia, the latter in East Asia. In terms of the earliest evidence for cultivation, that seems related to the Japonica subspecies or its ancestors in China — this comes from parts of the Yangtze River Basin , the Middle Yangtze, like Hunan province, the lower Yangtze around Zhejiang and tributaries to the north, like the Huaihe river. There's a good case to be made for multiple independent starts of cultivation in China going back 10,000 years. Quite separately, you have an early use of wild rice in parts of northern India, especially in the Ganges River Basin, stretching into the Upper Ganges-Yamuna areas. When that was cultivated and domesticated is much debated — I'd say there is evidence for early cultivation in India 5,000 years ago and possibly even 9,000 years ago. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Importantly, genetic evidence today shows there was ancient hybridisation between East Asian Japonicas and the ancestors of Indica. Introduced rices from East Asia mixed with local varieties in India and produced something new — Indica rice as known today. That explains our picture from modern genomes and archaeological evidence. I think the hybridisation occurred around 4,000 years ago, with an introduced variety that came to India via trade from East Asia. Did rice cultivation change landscapes? Yes — rice is unique among cereals in that it's a wetland species. It likes a lot of water, in contrast to wheat, barley or millets, all semi-arid dryland species. As rice needs water, its initial cultivation, whether in the Yangtze or Ganges Valley, was in naturally flooded areas. As rice agriculture spread upland and southwards through the Deccan in India, it reached dry areas requiring irrigation. People then created bunded paddy fields that trapped rainwater — they started making artificial wetlands. That was transformative of the landscape. Did this also change social structures? Creating artificial wetlands and irrigation systems demands a lot of labour, alongside irrigated rice is highly productive and feeds many more people. As rice cultivation expanded in India and Southeast Asia , it encouraged population growth and density, early urbanisation and the rise of social hierarchy — the control of land, rice and labour to build irrigation works fed into more hierarchical societies. Did rice also impact animal life? Artificial wetlands are a challenge to plough — the water buffalo became suitable. They are native to India, where their domestication happened in the Harappan world independent of rice. As its cultivation grew, its use increased. Paddy fields also attract wetland small fauna and fish like carp. Some became sources of protein in traditional Southeast Asian systems and a comanagement of various kinds of fish in rice paddies developed. Did rice entail interactions across these ancient societies? Yes. With the establishment of rice-based agricultural systems and early urbanisation in north India and the Ganges plains in the Iron Age around 3,000 years ago, craft specialisation started. Fine ceramics, stonework, beads, metallurgy, etc., began — these got traded over long distances. Our earliest evidence for contact between India and Southeast Asia is from then — you see the arrival of Indian-made ceramics, beads, etc., in Southeast Asia, alongside other Indian crops like mung and toor lentils turning up in sites in southern Thailand. Later, ideas of Buddhism and Hinduism spread in Southeast Asia but the first interaction was about craft and agriculture, supported by rice. What are some of the most fascinating archaeobotanical rice relics you've seen? I've worked on the Tianluoshan site in China, discovered in 2004. It was one of the first places where we could recover the spikelet base of rice, a very small structure that attaches the grain to the plant — it undergoes a key morphological change as a result of domestication, where the plant loses the ability to disperse itself by shattering and now requires planting and harvesting by humans. In this archaeological material, we could see the actual gradual change of the population away from the wild, shattering type towards the domesticated type. In 2006, I also visited the Lahuradeva site managed by the Uttar Pradesh State Department of Archaeology . It shows how people there were consuming rice 6,000 years ago, the debate being over how domesticated or wild that food was. What are the implications of climate change for rice — and vice versa? There are arguments that rice contributes to climate change because its wetland environments produce methane — that's not from rice itself but the methanogenic microorganisms in the wetland waters. Of course, most global warming is from fossil fuel use. But there is research now on ways to grow rice that reduce methane output while ensuring productivity. Meanwhile, climate change is altering rainfall distribution in time and space — that is challenging for ricegrowing because it may increase water shortages and drought. Hence, more drought-tolerant species, like millets, are another direction for research. How different is the rice we eat today, compared to ancient varieties? There are continuities and changes. Interestingly, wild rice populations had red grains — now, that's relatively rare compared to white or brown rice today. Earlier, people selected varieties partly for aesthetics and because it was thought white rice cooks faster and tastes different. People also selected for fragrance, from basmati to jasmine. There is no evidence that any of the wild rices were fragrant, though, so that's a mutation. There's been selection for stickiness in Southeast Asia with glutinous rices, which also didn't exist in wild varieties. So, in its long cultural history, humans have changed rice, from a more standard wild form to very different kinds across diverse cultures.
Asahi Shimbun
04-07-2025
- Business
- Asahi Shimbun
In reversal, Japan now wants rice farmers to produce more. Will it work?
JOETSU, Niigata Prefecture--For more than half a century, the Japanese government has encouraged its rice farmers to grow less of the crop so that prices of the national staple grain remained relatively high and steady. Now, under an ambitious agricultural policy announced this year, Tokyo is preparing for a reversal, envisaging a future of bountiful output that would secure the country's food security without sending prices into freefall and hurting its politically influential farmers. The new direction has taken on an unexpected urgency as Japanese grapple with a shortage of the all-important staple, which has prompted a historic spike in prices, a flood of imports, and interest from President Donald Trump, who has renewed pressure on Japan to buy U.S. rice as part of the allies' elusive trade deal. It is a policy that many farmers like Kazuhachi Hosaka welcome in principle, but with trepidation because questions over how it would work in practice remain unanswered. The government is aiming to complete a roadmap by the middle of next year. "We'd want the government to make sure there's some kind of a safety net for producers," Hosaka said at his farm in the northern prefecture of Niigata. "It's easy enough to switch rice for feed or processed foods to staple rice. But tilling land for new paddies or switching from wheat or soybeans would require labor, machinery and all kinds of investments." This year, Hosaka allocated all but 10 hectares (25 acres) of his 180-hectare land for staple rice, reducing feed-use rice by 20 hectares given the attractive prices. But he worries that prices could plunge if Japan's overall production goes unchecked under the new policy, set to be implemented from the 2027 crop year. "I do feel conflicted," Hosaka said about the doubling of retail rice prices to above 4,000 yen ($27.80) for a 5kg bag this year in what has turned into a national crisis. "It's important that rice prices settle at levels acceptable to both producers and consumers," he said. Hosaka hopes prices would stabilize around 3,000 to 3,500 yen - a level Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba also hopes would be palatable for voters. Supermarket prices fell for a fifth straight week, to 3,801 yen in the seven days to June 22, but were still 70% higher than the same period last year. NATIONAL CRISIS For Japanese people, rice is more than just a staple food. Cultivated in the country for more than 2,000 years, rice is considered sacred in the indigenous Shinto religion and is deeply ingrained in local tradition and culture. The Japanese are famously proud of their short-grain Japonica variety, protecting the market with trade barriers. So when rice turned into a luxury item this year, consumers fumed and policymakers - facing imminent elections - worried. With an eye on voters ahead of an upper house election on July 20, the government has been releasing emergency rice from its stockpile to sell for about 2,000 yen ($13.83) per 5 kg (11 pounds). Farmers - also traditionally an important voting bloc for Ishiba's Liberal Democratic Party - were told it was a dire but necessary move to protect Japan's food security and prevent consumers from switching permanently away from homegrown rice. But for most of the past 50 years, Japan has poured its energy into doing the opposite: providing subsidies to farmers to grow crops other than staple rice so as to prevent oversupply and a fall in prices. That system backfired last year when the farm ministry misread supply from the heat-damaged 2023 harvest, resulting in a severe shortage in August. The ensuing surge in prices made Japan an anomaly against a fall in global prices, and exposed the risks of its approach. The new policy, if successful, would prevent a recurrence by allocating 350,000 tons of rice for export in 2030 - an eight-fold jump from 45,000 tons last year - that could be redirected to the domestic market in the event of a shortage, the government says. Some agricultural experts say the policy is unrealistic. The idea of selling expensive Japanese rice abroad is counterintuitive, especially when even Japan is importing record amounts of the grain despite the 341 yen per kg levy that had previously priced foreign products out of the market. Japanese have also acquired a taste for U.S. Calrose rice, while imports from Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam have also been popular with businesses and cost-conscious consumers. "Expensive rice might sell to niche markets, but getting that up to 350,000 tons would require price competitiveness, and there's a long way for that," said Kazunuki Ohizumi, professor emeritus at Miyagi University and an expert on agricultural management. The government aims to provide some form of support but also expects farmers to make their own efforts to consolidate, and make use of artificial intelligence and other technologies to lower production costs. Meanwhile, Hosaka said, prices of fertilizers, pesticides and fuel have shot up, sending production costs through the roof. "It's tough," he said. "The government has released quite a bit of stockpiled rice, so I'm very worried about prices falling even further."
The Star
04-07-2025
- Business
- The Star
In reversal, Japan now wants rice farmers to produce more. Will it work?
JOETSU, Japan: For more than half a century, the Japanese government has encouraged its rice farmers to grow less of the crop so that prices of the national staple grain remained relatively high and steady. Now, under an ambitious agricultural policy announced this year, Tokyo is preparing for a reversal, envisaging a future of bountiful output that would secure the country's food security without sending prices into freefall and hurting its politically influential farmers. The new direction has taken on an unexpected urgency as Japanese grapple with a shortage of the all-important staple, which has prompted a historic spike in prices, a flood of imports, and interest from President Donald Trump, who has renewed pressure on Japan to buy US rice as part of the allies' elusive trade deal. It is a policy that many farmers like Kazuhachi Hosaka welcome in principle, but with trepidation because questions over how it would work in practice remain unanswered. The government is aiming to complete a roadmap by the middle of next year. "We'd want the government to make sure there's some kind of a safety net for producers," Hosaka said at his farm in the northern prefecture of Niigata. "It's easy enough to switch rice for feed or processed foods to staple rice. But tilling land for new paddies or switching from wheat or soybeans would require labour, machinery and all kinds of investments." This year, Hosaka allocated all but 10 hectares (25 acres) of his 180-hectare land for staple rice, reducing feed-use rice by 20 hectares given the attractive prices. But he worries that prices could plunge if Japan's overall production goes unchecked under the new policy, set to be implemented from the 2027 crop year. "I do feel conflicted," Hosaka said about the doubling of retail rice prices to above 4,000 yen (US$27.80) for a 5kg bag this year in what has turned into a national crisis. "It's important that rice prices settle at levels acceptable to both producers and consumers," he said. Hosaka hopes prices would stabilise around 3,000 to 3,500 yen - a level Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba also hopes would be palatable for voters. Supermarket prices fell for a fifth straight week, to 3,801 yen in the seven days to June 22, but were still 70% higher than the same period last year. For Japanese people, rice is more than just a staple food. Cultivated in the country for more than 2,000 years, rice is considered sacred in the indigenous Shinto religion and is deeply ingrained in local tradition and culture. The Japanese are famously proud of their short-grain Japonica variety, protecting the market with trade barriers. So when rice turned into a luxury item this year, consumers fumed and policymakers - facing imminent elections - worried. With an eye on voters ahead of an upper house election on July 20, the government has been releasing emergency rice from its stockpile to sell for about 2,000 yen ($13.83) per 5 kg. Farmers - also traditionally an important voting bloc for Ishiba's Liberal Democratic Party - were told it was a dire but necessary move to protect Japan's food security and prevent consumers from switching permanently away from homegrown rice. But for most of the past 50 years, Japan has poured its energy into doing the opposite: providing subsidies to farmers to grow crops other than staple rice so as to prevent oversupply and a fall in prices. That system backfired last year when the farm ministry misread supply from the heat-damaged 2023 harvest, resulting in a severe shortage in August. The ensuing surge in prices made Japan an anomaly against a fall in global prices, and exposed the risks of its approach. The new policy, if successful, would prevent a recurrence by allocating 350,000 tonnes of rice for export in 2030 - an eight-fold jump from 45,000 tonnes last year - that could be redirected to the domestic market in the event of a shortage, the government says. Some agricultural experts say the policy is unrealistic. The idea of selling expensive Japanese rice abroad is counterintuitive, especially when even Japan is importing record amounts of the grain despite the 341 yen per kg levy that had previously priced foreign products out of the market. Japanese have also acquired a taste for US Calrose rice, while imports from Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam have also been popular with businesses and cost-conscious consumers. "Expensive rice might sell to niche markets, but getting that up to 350,000 tonnes would require price competitiveness, and there's a long way for that," said Kazunuki Ohizumi, professor emeritus at Miyagi University and an expert on agricultural management. The government aims to provide some form of support but also expects farmers to make their own efforts to consolidate, and make use of artificial intelligence and other technologies to lower production costs. Meanwhile, Hosaka said, prices of fertilisers, pesticides and fuel have shot up, sending production costs through the roof. "It's tough," he said. "The government has released quite a bit of stockpiled rice, so I'm very worried about prices falling even further." - Reuters
