Japan’s long-standing efforts to protect domestic farmers from outside competition, including limiting imports of foreign rice
Here’s the why in case anyone is wondering. It’s not a global issue.
Japan seems hell bent on not taking any steps to improve things. They have serious issues with population demographics and they are really shit about allowing immigrants in to work in the likes of agriculture.
Protectionism. Louisiana makes plenty of rice.
Rice grown in former plantation states tends to be very high in arsenic, a holdover from the cotton-growing days.
For US-grown rice, my understanding is that California-grown is much safer to consume.
So that’s why we always rinse the rice. Interesting. Will have to get some Cali rice.
Clarification: They are queuing for cheap rice.
I can go to any supermarket in my city and buy rice. I just have to be willing to pay four times what I’m used to for it. It is getting harder to find supermarkets still selling 10kg bags because those things are approaching ¥10,000.
Japan has had a more severe shortage of potato chips than this.
for cheap rice
But isn’t this just the definition of a shortage? The thing becomes scarce and so what IS available becomes incredibly expensive? I don’t see the differentiation you are trying to make. Wild price inflation happens when there is in fact not enough of the thing to go around.
Oh so it’s only poor people who are struggling. Not to worry then. Back to it lads.
That is wild! In Denmark I buy rice for 15 kr (~2€) / kg. Granted, it’s probably nowhere near the quality of Japanese rice. But still, what a price difference.
Setting aside the rice shortage, the Japanese government has laws in place to keep rice prices high for… I have no idea why. A big part of the shortage is that blowing up in their faces.
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I’m guessing it’s to protect the rice farmers, since if the price decreases enough, they’ll have to either produce other crops or do something else entirely. They’re already having enough problems with people moving to cities, so I doubt they want to create even more incentive.
Farms in Japan are likely disappearing as they are elsewhere. Attempting to protect domestic supply isn’t a bad idea. Doing it in a way that is not detrimental to the population would probably be helpful.
10000 yen is 60 EUR.
Or 69 freedom buckaroos for 22 pounds of rice
No one cares about American terms anymore.
That’s insane to think about. I usually buy a 20 lb bag of Thai Jasmine rice for a little over $20 her in the US. I think I would seriously break down and cry if I had to pay almost $70.
Did I mention they have massive tariffs on foreign rice specifically so it doesn’t outcompete more expensive Japanese rice?
Self-inflicted crisis
Not quite, because the reason they don’t want to buy from overseas is because they’ve had three decades trapped in a deflation crisis. So every time they buy anything from overseas it shows the weak buying power of the Japanese yen (which is a product of the deflationary “lost years”).
…so there’s a unique economic context for why they’re acting this way.
Capitalism everywhere is failing
You can’t call it free market capitalism when you’re literally restricting who can and can not import rice and then getting upset at yourself for the self-inflicted starvation. This isn’t capitalism, it’s the very definition of Protectionism, and yes: closed-matket protectionists are failing everywhere, from Brexiteers to MAGA morons, to closed-market rice farmers.
This isn’t to say that unfettered Capitalism is the answer, or that all protectionist policies are bad. Any policy taken to the extreme is guilty of the real sin: not learning from the strengths and weaknesses of the systems they rail against and using them to build a more robust and functional middle ground.
Capitalism ≠ Free Market
Capitalism, by definition, is the pursuit and hoarding of wealth at all costs. This is ideologically opposed to the concept of a free market, because it will inevitably lead to captured markets and trusts.
While I agree that this particular scenario is unrelated to Capitalism as it is a matter of national protectionism, I’m simply taking umbrage with using “free market” and “capitalism” in a sentence together. Capitalism will always ultimately kill a free market.
