Japan veers from rice shortage to glut, dealing blow to farmers

Last year, Japan was flooding its rice market with emergency stockpiles in a bid to mollify voters angered by the soaring price of its staple grain. Now, it has the opposite problem: a glut. That’s welcome news for shoppers, but the whiplash is hurting people such as Hiroshi Asano, 59, who farms a relatively large 38 hectares of rice fields in Chiba, close to Tokyo.

He expects to make a loss this year, and he’s worried smaller-scale farmers won’t be able to survive.