Tag Archives: Japan Report

  Tomokatsu Sowa Amid reports that Japan and the United States are considering expanding Japan’s import quota for U.S. rice in the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade talks, Japanese farmers in rice growing regions are voicing worries and anger, saying that increased imports would ruin their efforts to balance domestic supply and demand by reducing production of table rice and shifting to production of rice for livestock feed. “Don’t they care if the government’s policy to tighten supply-demand balance of rice ends up in failure?” says Shusaku Watanabe, 78, who heads Oshigenai, an agricultural producers’ co-operative corporation in the city of Odate, Akita Prefecture. Hit by dropping rice prices, Oshigenai went into … Continue reading →