Rice prices Japan's issue, on and off the farm

Ilis calm at Satoshi Yamazaki's rice farm, with its freshly planted rows of vivid-green seedlings, but a row over the cost of the staple in Japan is threatening to deal the government a blow at the ballot box.

- Kyoko Hasegawa, Agence France-Presse

Shortages of the grain caused by a supply chain snarl-up have seen prices almost double in a year, fuelling frustration over inflation — and voters could let their anger be known in upper house elections due next month. To help ease the pain for consumers and restaurants, the government started tapping emergency stockpiles in March, having only previously done so during disasters.

Yamazaki, who grows about IO per cent of his rice organically using ducks to eat pests, said he understands high prices are “troubling” for ordinary people. But he stressed that thin profits are a concern for many of those who produce it. “There's a gap between shop prices and what farmers sell rice for to traders and the like,” he told AFP in the northern Niigata region.