stop it with your reservation for earthquakes

Over the last years the Government of Japan has had to use its emergency rice reserve to face precisely that, emergencies. He did it after The earthquake and tsamot who hit the east of the country in March 2011. And he did it again years later after the fades that made the ground tremble in Kumamoto. Now the authorities have been forced to resort again to its national silos, although not to respond to an unforeseen emergency. Or not at least one in the conventional sense of the word.

Its objective is another: stop The increase of rice.

A price: ¥ 3,939. That is what cost average at the end of February a sack of five kilos of rice in Japan: 3,939 yen, equivalent to 24.4 euros. It is a lot (a lot) more than just a year ago, when for that same grain a family paid around 2,000 yen (€ 12.4). At the beginning of March the Ministry of Agriculture made a survey again in a thousand stores and found that the 5 kg bag was already in 4,077 yen (€ 25.3).

A percentage: 71%. Price climbing is not new. The Japanese have been seeing how to prepare a rice bowl comes out more and more expensivewith increases of 30, 40%… or even more pronounced. At the beginning of 2025 the basic government price index showed that the bags were registering year -on -year increases of the 71% In the 23 districts of Tokyo, a devastating fact for several reasons. The main one, the enormous weight that the grain has in the Japanese diet.

Although It has been decreasing Over the years by the influence of foreign cuisine based on wheat flour and its current consumption is far from the peaks reached in the 60sthe per capita grain demand remains more than considerable in Japan: in 2020 It was around 51 kilos. As a reference, in 2022 an average Japanese consumed four more times than an American.

One question: Why? The million dollar question. What does that increase in rice respond to? The truth is that there is no One reason. In the price escalation, a meteorology has influenced adverse For crops, the Increased demand In full tourist boom, the panic purchases (encouraged in 2024 for the threat of a “Megaterremoto”), the government policies that affect the crop, the shortage… And something else: The shadow of speculation.

“Some companies and individuals have begun to trade with rice as if it were a money game,” I recognized Recently a The New York Times Masayuki Ogawa, professor of agricultural economy at the University of Ussunomiya. The Minister of Agriculture, Silviculture and Fisheries, Taku Etō, He has admitted in public that the situation is “extremely irregular”. “We are producing 180,000 extra tons and we have enough in stock. If one goes to the supermarket you can find rice. But the price is abnormally high: it costs double.”

An exit: the auction. Before such a panorama, the Japanese government has opted for A radical output: use their emergency rice reserves, a fund that the country maintains Since 1995 to meet domestic demand in cases of Force Majeuresuch as bad harvests, meteorological disasters or earthquakes. In total round The million tons of grain, a wide stock that was useful for example after the earthquake and the tsamot that affected the islands 14 years ago.

On this occasion it has not been necessary to tremble or lift huge waves. It has come that the price index is triggered. And yes It is exceptional. The country Never before He had used the rice reserve to reduce prices.

A few days ago the government took auction near 165,000 tons of grain so that they could bid for it professional operators, distributors through which they expect the grain to reach supermarkets. The objective: cover the demand, weave prices and give a break to families. The call aroused the interest of seven bidders who ended up Something more than 90% of the rice available. In total that supposes 141,796 tons of rice

An objective: repeat. It will not be the only government movement to reduce the price of rice. Tokyo plans to release 210,000 tons And the ministry already warns that if that measure does not work, it will be distributed even more. “We will do our best to solve the bottleneck in the supply chain and relieve consumer difficulties,” Eto emphasizesthat seeks a “balance between supply and demand”.

For now the authorities have already decided to auction others 70,000 tons which remain to achieve their objective of 210,000 T injected into the market. It will do it a priori the last week of March. Once the government has completed the government will have mobilized more than The fifth part of its emergency reserves.

Images | Steven Rieder (Flickr) 1 and 2 and Fidel Fernando (UNSPLASH)

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