Japan’s Food Insecurity Challenge

As a resource-poor island nation, Japan struggles with low food self-sufficiency. It depends on foreign countries for roughly 60 percent of its food, which is the highest rate among G-7 nations. But there is growing urgency among policymakers to strengthen Japan’s food supply network amid rising food prices and food shortages as the Russian invasion of Ukraine shows no sign of winding down. There are additional concerns that a military conflict around Japan, such as a Taiwan contingency, could disrupt vital sea lanes that deliver livestock feed, fertilizer, and pesticides essential to its struggling  agriculture sector.

Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries (MAFF) is proposing a taskforce to bolster food supplies in the case of an emergency. MAFF is currently considering creating a system that would order farmers and private businesses to increase production of crops to prepare for food shortages. MAFF aims to incorporate the system under the Food, Agriculture, and Rural Areas Basic Law when it is revised next year.　

Japan’s elevated sense of concern is tied to current events. The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) index for world food prices in 2022 was 18 points higher than the previous year and higher for the third consecutive year. In a plenary session among G-7 agricultural ministers, with Japan as host, they agreed to strengthen food security by supporting developing countries that produce grains and rice.

Japanese households are facing a cost of living crisis with soaring wheat, corn, oil, and gas prices. The consumer price index in Japan has remained below 2 percent for two decades. In the depth of the 2008 financial crisis, inflation rose to a relatively low 2.6 percent. But in January consumer inflation jumped to 4.2 percent – the fastest acceleration in 41 years.

The three basic tools for achieving food security are increasing domestic production, national stockpiles, and imports. But Japan faces immense challenges increasing domestic agricultural production. The agricultural sector is currently on the front lines of Japan’s rapidly aging population and declining birth rate.

Japan has many small-scale farms, and the average age of a farmer is 68 years old. Many struggle to find a successor to take over family farms. According to 2021 statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture, the number of farmers has fallen drastically from 9 million in 1965 to 1.3 million. The total area of Japanese farmland has also fallen significantly in the same timeframe, from 6.4 million hectares to 4.3 million hectares.

Internet of Things-equipped “smart farming” tools – such as satellite monitoring, drones, and cutting-edge AI systems – will be vital to lifting Japan’s agricultural productivity and transitioning to large-scale farming methods. But some experts believe it could take at least 10 years before smart farming becomes widespread in the industry due to the average age of farmers.

In Japan, rice carries a cultural and historical significance associated with nourishment and nostalgia for one’s hometown. This has led the Japanese government to heavily regulate rice production and farmland to ensure the staple food is stable and from entirely domestic sources. However, the Westernization of the modern Japanese diet is contributing to an influx of imported foods and a fall in rice consumption in favor of meat and cheese. Given that, some experts propose that Japan should shift to being a rice-exporting nation, reserving the right to divert rice exports for domestic consumption in an emergency. The depreciating yen also means Japanese rice would sell well internationally.

But one major obstacle to liberalizing the farming sector is the Board of Agriculture, which gives permission for the buying, selling, and leasing of farmland. The abolishment of the system could pave the way for companies to invest capital in setting up farms for both domestic supply and export.

Another piece of the food security puzzle is the national stockpile of staple foods. Japan stockpiles roughly 2.3 months’ worth of rice, wheat, and corn to feed livestock in an emergency such as a fall in domestic production or disrupted imports from unforeseen circumstances. Currently, the Japanese government subsidizes storage costs for private companies stockpiling  essential agricultural commodities. But there are concerns that in a true emergency Japan would be forced to return to a post-war diet made up of rations of rice and potatoes.

In an emergency where other food options are limited, Japan’s population of 125 million people would require around 16 million tons of rice. But with rice consumption falling to 7 million tons per year, MAFF and Japan Agricultural Cooperatives have cut back national rice production to 6.7 million tons in an effort to stabilize domestic rice prices. The supply shortfall means more than half of the population would lose access to rice if imports were cut off.

Fertilizer is considered to be the key to increasing agricultural output. But Japan imports all of the chemical components needed to produce fertilizers, namely urea from Malaysia and China. If trade with China were stopped abruptly, lack of fertilizers would bring agricultural production to a standstill. Currently, the International Agricultural Research Institute is developing a wheat variety that can produce the same yield with a 60 percent reduction in nitrogen fertilizer.

Nevertheless, Japan continues to struggle to ensure food security. A home-grown strategy to improve food self-sufficiency requires an overhaul of the present government regulation and to breathe new life into the agricultural sector.