Government blames rice price surges on procurement route changes

Rice price surges in Japan since last summer were caused by wholesalers procuring rice through different routes than in previous years, a government white paper on agriculture said Friday.
The paper, presented at the day's Cabinet meeting, described the situation since last summer's rice shortage.
After the government issued in August last year information warning of a possible major earthquake in the Nankai Trough off Japan's Pacific coast, people's purchases of rice at supermarkets increased about 1.5 times from a year before. This coincided with the time of year when distributors' rice stocks often decrease ahead of the release of newly harvested rice, causing rice scarcity at retailers and others.
The amount of rice cropped in 2024 increased by 180,000 metric tons from the previous year, but the volume handled by major buyers was significantly lower, due in part to some rice producers boosting direct sales to consumers and sales to nonconventional buyers.
The white paper concluded that rice prices at retailers soared because wholesalers had to buy rice at relatively high prices via different procurement routes to supplement shortfalls.
It explained that the government has worked to ease the stagnation of the rice supply, including by holding multiple auctions for government-stockpiled rice since March this year.
The government later switched the method of releasing its stockpiled rice from competitive bidding to no-bid contracts.

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