The Underlying Causes of Rice Price Surge: The sin of reducing rice acreage in response to pressure from the Japan Agricultural Co-operatives (JA)

Table of Contents

Why doesn't the price of rice drop significantly even if the government releases a large amount of stockpiled rice?
Why is it predicted that the surge in rice prices will not subside until the fall of 2026?

The abnormal rice shortage is not mainly caused by poor harvests due to heat waves. It is fundamentally caused by the policy of reducing rice acreage, which continues even in the Reiwa period (2019~). In fact, it is a man-made disaster from the “rice-killing structure” created by the “agricultural policy triangle”—JA, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF), and the politicians supported by the agricultural sector—which intentionally reduces rice production, maintains high prices, and benefits those with vested interests.
How has the “agricultural policy triangle,” treated rice as a tool for vested interests and as a political issue that ignores consumers and taxpayers, and how have they manipulated rice prices? How has it imposed massive fiscal burdens (equivalent to a 2% of consumption tax) on the public without their awareness, and how has it destroyed Japan's rice fields?

And what is the mechanism of distorted distribution that deviates from economic principles and market rules? This is a challenging and powerful opinion piece exposing the dark history of agricultural policy that abandoned its core responsibility of providing a stable rice supply and reveals the “mastermind” behind the soaring rice price and the Reiwa Rice Crisis.
A former MAFF bureaucrat urgently proposes dismantling the privilege structure that leaves the public and full-time rice farmers at a disadvantage in order to reach a new milestone toward achieving true food security.