the biggest wall thats blocking it is japanese rice making unions. so its a fine line to run if one is on the pro union stance, and wants to ignore the market.
officially its a cooperative but given the businesses are ran by like i think 70 year old farmers themselves, japan has a hill to climb to fix the issue on multiple fronts.
the country itself wants to protect its rice industry, doesnt incentivize starting up a new rice farm (one of the hurdles, as well as the fact that young people dont really want to become farmers) and the populaces preference to japanese specific grain of rice. Japan actovely imports the strain from the US, China and Australia.
the industry output basically hasnt recovered fast enough from the sharp decrease of demand during covid, to the sharp increase of demand after traveling restrictions went back to normal. Ultimately the solution is going to end up allowing more international japanese grain to come in, but the government is resistant, and now has been a major talking point of the further nationalist groups in japans election cycle.
the biggest wall thats blocking it is japanese rice making unions. so its a fine line to run if one is on the pro union stance, and wants to ignore the market.
aren’t Japanese farmers heavily subsidized already and protected by tariffs?
Yea afaik its a terrible petit bourgeois system, lots of small plot farmers, their yields have been stagnant for many decades because of that.
Union or cooperative?
officially its a cooperative but given the businesses are ran by like i think 70 year old farmers themselves, japan has a hill to climb to fix the issue on multiple fronts.
the country itself wants to protect its rice industry, doesnt incentivize starting up a new rice farm (one of the hurdles, as well as the fact that young people dont really want to become farmers) and the populaces preference to japanese specific grain of rice. Japan actovely imports the strain from the US, China and Australia.
the industry output basically hasnt recovered fast enough from the sharp decrease of demand during covid, to the sharp increase of demand after traveling restrictions went back to normal. Ultimately the solution is going to end up allowing more international japanese grain to come in, but the government is resistant, and now has been a major talking point of the further nationalist groups in japans election cycle.
In this case, it’s a petit bourgeois union, it’s effectively acting as a monopoly, driving rice prices higher without ever increasing productivity.