In Japan, changing diets raise ‘famine’ fears as food – and Taiwan – crises loom

Japan’s food self-sufficiency ratio has slumped in recent years as more Japanese opt for imported breads, meats and oils over domestically grown rice

An ex-agriculture ministry official warned Japan’s access to food imports ‘would be destroyed’ if it got involved in a Taiwan crisis, causing ‘famine’

Reading Time:6 minutes

A farmer harvests rice near Japan’s Mount Fuji last year. For decades, Japanese consumers have been eating less rice and fish in favour of more imported bread, meat and edible oil. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 12:05pm, 29 Aug 2022Updated: 12:07pm, 29 Aug 2022

Russian missiles pounding Ukraine have spooked Japan into boosting defence spending. Now, with tensions rising over the Taiwan Strait, calls are growing to address another security threat: shrivelling rice paddies.

For decades, Japanese consumers have been eating less rice and fish in favour of more bread, meat and edible oil, leading the country’s calorie-based food self-sufficiency ratio to slump to 37 per cent in 2020 from 73 per cent in 1965 – the lowest among major economies.

Toshiyuki Ito, retired vice admiral for Japan’s Maritime Self-Defence Force, said the government’s abandonment of rice paddies and other agricultural land is leaving the country more vulnerable than ever.

Japanese fashion model and singer Shiho Fujita (right) poses in front of a rice field in 2009 for a campaign aimed at making Japan’s dying farms trendy with younger people. Photo: AFP

“They don’t do anything for national security,” Ito, now a professor at Kanazawa Institute of Technology, said about Japan’s ministries responsible for food production. “They think only about economic efficiency.”

The impact of higher global grain prices, fertiliser shortages and fuel inflation, exacerbated by a weaker yen, have already been filtering through to Japanese consumers in recent months, with supermarkets marking up everything form instant ramen noodles to ice cream.

But any major blockade or disruption to sea lanes around China and the Taiwan Strait could have bigger implications than just price inflation. Unlike the United States and European Union, Japan would have little to fall back on in the event that food imports were to dry up.

To ensure the country’s national security, it is crucial for Japan to increase the amount of rice and wheat grown domestically, according to Nobuhiro Suzuki, a professor of agricultural economics at the University of Tokyo.