Last year, Japan was flooding its rice market with emergency stockpiles in a bid to mollify voters angered by the soaring price of its staple grain.
Now, it has the opposite problem: a glut.
That’s welcome news for shoppers, but the whiplash is hurting people such as Hiroshi Asano, 59, who farms a relatively large 38 hectares of rice fields in Chiba, close to Tokyo. He expects to make a loss this year, and he’s worried smaller-scale farmers won’t be able to survive.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.