Kengo Tabe and Fumiko Kai

Bad weather and stockpiling are among the difficulties encountered.

TOKYO – Rice prices have not stopped surging. The average price for a five-kilogram bag of rice at supermarkets nationwide has exceeded ¥4,000, almost doubled from a year ago. This is at least partially being caused by a shortage of rice and changes in its distribution.

The government has released stockpiled rice, which is expected to start showing up on store shelves late this month. However, it remains uncertain whether the measure will help reduce prices.

Heavy rain, heat waves

The Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry announced in February the amount of rice produced in 2024 was 6.79 million tons, up 180,000 tons from the amount in the previous year. The amount of rice to be distributed in the market was expected to increase and help reduce rice prices, yet prices continue to surge.

“The farm ministry’s statistics are different from the harvest we farmers actually feel,” said Takuya Aoki, who heads Hiraku-no-Sato Farm, an agricultural corporation that grows Koshihikari and other rice brands in Minami-Uonuma, Niigata Prefecture.

Each year, the farm ministry randomly chooses rice paddies at 8,000 locations across the country, reaps rice, examines its quality and calculates the amount of crop per 0.1 hectares. The ministry estimates the total rice production based on these figures and the planted area of crops nationwide.

A rice production index released by the ministry indicated the amount of rice produced in 2024 was about the same as in normal years. But Aoki disagreed with the assessment. “The figures did not reflect the effects of the long spell of rain that caused rice plants to fall over, resulting in lower rice quality,” he said.

Kazuhisa Karasawa, head of the Japan Agricultural Cooperative in Niigata Prefecture, or JA Uonuma, says that in the process of removing bran from brown rice to polish it into white rice, some of the rice would break into pieces due to deterioration caused by high temperatures. This made the consumable amount of white rice decline more than in an average year.

This indicates the amount of rice of a quality that can be traded in the market could be smaller than the ministry’s estimate of 6.79 million tons of rice produced, resulting in further rice shortages and prices remaining high.

“Rice prices are surging because of shortages of the rice itself,” said a person in charge at a major restaurant chain.

Reselling suspected

It has also been pointed out some dealers are buying up and stockpiling rice. “That is clogging up rice distribution,” said a source close to a major trading firm, indicating such dealers do not release the stocks, expecting to trade them at high prices, which has helped to cause the current crunch in supply and demand.

The National Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Associations, or Zen-Noh, and other organizations collect rice from producers and sell it in bulk to wholesalers. But the amount of rice collected as of January this year was 230,000 tons smaller than last year. “Certain wholesalers and farmers are keeping rice in stock,” said a ministry official.

Some dealers buy rice directly from farmers without going through Zen-Noh or other organizations. There also seem to be scalpers who buy out what rice farmers sell online and resell it at high prices.

“I heard that a self-proclaimed rice wholesaler last autumn visited a farmer who is my acquaintance to buy rice,” said a rice farmer in his 60s in Oshu, Iwate Prefecture. “I think I would have sold rice to the dealer if he had come to my place.”

Rice has also been popular as a gift in the furusato nozei hometown tax donation system in recent years. In some cases, rice will be delivered to consumers without going through organizations that collect rice.

“We cannot grasp the whole picture because of growing moves to directly procure rice from producers,” said the head of Zen-Noh’s rice department.

Published Date: March 24, 2025