Japan Heading For A Rice Policy Rethink

The global food crisis has forced Japanese policy makers to rethink its 1971 price support policy with curbs on planting and limits rice planting to about 60 % of Japan's paddy fields.

Although these produce enough to satisfy Japan's appetite for the grain, the remaining paddy fields either grow other crops or lie fallow, an expensive anomaly in a nation that is the world's top net importer of farm products.

But politicians reluctant to upset their rural constituencies warn that prices, so isolated that they sat out a recent buffeting in global markets, could collapse if rice production is unleashed. Japan's large rice crop in 2007 caused wholesale prices to fall 10 % and the glut forced the government to buy 340,000 MT of rice to support prices.