Japan has always prided itself on the quality of its rice, but the country’s massive rice market has found itself the subject of international debate. With accusations of unfair market access, and domestic concerns about cheap foreign rice being passed off as homegrown rice, the controversy extends from farms to government, as Michael Fitzpatrick reports.
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To Japanese people no food is more sacred than rice. Special sieves are employed in each kitchen sink to catch every grain should one fall during its lovingly prolonged washing. Rice, as one cultural pundit put it, is Japan. So when it was discovered in 2001 that nearly half of all rice wholesalers had been mixing cheap foreign rice and selling it as pure and very expensive homegrown rice (up to £5 or US$ a pound), the nation was left choking on its rice balls.
Not only was it a wake-up call for the food tracers, the incident also highlighted Japan’s curious relationship with food imports and a ruling government’s precarious grip on power. A rule that some say is only possible because the government is so successful in keeping foreign grains out of Japan’s massive rice market.
Domestically produced rice in Japan receives massive protection from competition in the form of artificially high prices and a stunning 490% tariff on imported rice. It’s a protectionism that has importers fuming.
“In our view Japan does not provide fair market access,” says Bob Cummings, vice president for international policy at the US Rice Federation. “The vast majority is imported by a government department, goes to government warehouses and never finds its way to consumers.”
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By GlobalDataThe US in particular has gone a long way to reproduce the same sticky, short-grain white rice that the Japanese prefer. Grown by the ton in California to meet a demand for ‘real’ Japanese rice in the US and elsewhere, the cheaper import would be a huge threat to Japan’s rice growers if only the Japanese were allowed to get to it.
Government keeps rice farmers on side
Banned until 1997 when Japan begrudgingly opened its doors to rice for the first time, the country must now, by WTO agreement, import 682,000 tons of rice a year but only 100,000 tons of that goes on the market, says Cummings. Japan’s farming unions, with some nine million members, say the government should resist lowering the trade barrier because the nation already imports about two thirds of its food.
Japan may be the biggest consumer of rice after China and hence a potentially lucrative market but getting the world’s rice onto Japanese shelves itself has been a hard and long slog. This is a situation that pleases Japan’s inefficient rice farmers and the government who rely on their votes to stay in power.
Critics of Japan’s ruling party point to the right wing government’s reliance on such farmers, particularly rice farmers, to vote in a party that has ruled unabated since the end of World War II. Its secret, say its critics, is the four to one weighting of rural votes to urban dwellers. As long as the present Liberal Democrat government keeps up the rice barriers and keep farmers happy with high domestic rice prices and ludicrously high tariffs they will continue to rule. Popular imported rice could mean, unthinkable for many, the end of the LDP’s unbroken dynasty of 55 years no less and the installation of the city-dweller’s favourite opposition party.
Rice farmers and politicians may not have their way forever. But for the moment, prejudice against foreign rice seems to be in Japan’s masters’ favour although such attitudes could be eroding and giving heart to disgruntled exporters.
More intelligent media reports are replacing the likes of scaremongering over fears of added chemicals in the cheaper foreign rice imports. NHK TV, Japan’s equivalent of the UK’s BBC, brought some US-grown rice to a Japanese inspector to compare with the best Japanese-grown rice. He said there was no discernable difference between the two. A government poll that suggested the growing acceptance of foreign rice was published recently but only after Tokyo dithered over making the results public.
Passing the taste test
Six out of ten consumers surveyed by the farm ministry in the poll said they would have no problem buying imported rice, provided it was sufficiently safe and tasty. However, the remaining 40% said they would never buy foreign rice.
“We have heard the argument that the Japanese don’t like the taste of US grown rice. But every year we have blind tests next to Japanese varieties. Tasters find them no different. US rice can be competitive, we just want the opportunity to prove to Japanese consumers that US rice is acceptable,” said the US Rice Federation’s Bob Cummings.
However, exporters should not hold their breath, as the same survey revealed that only 10% of the respondents believed foreign rice to be either ‘about the same as’ or ‘better than’ domestic brand-name rice, in terms of taste and safety.
Curious then that during the times that so many Japanese wholesalers were bulking out some of Japan’s best rice by as much as 50%, no one noticed and no one complained.
DNA testing
For those who still believe home grown is best, Japan’s latest traceability methods should put at rest minds that insist that they don’t like the taste of foreign rice but are unable to spot it in their favourite staple.
To reinforce the ‘domestic is best’ message from the government, Japan is now going to the extreme of DNA testing its rice. The country’s Food Agency started DNA testing of all rice in Japan in fiscal 2001. It found labelling problems in 39% of products examined that year, though that rate dropped to 17% the following year.
Most of the culprits sold cheaper rice as Koshihikari rice – from Niigatta prefecture 300 kilometres west of Tokyo – which sells for about ¥18,700 (US$169) per 60 kilograms. The region is famous for its fragrant sticky, short-grain rice and for the gourmet rice Uonuma koshihikari, which nets a remarkable ¥31,300 per 60 kilos.
Traceability will go some way to ensure that consumers are not being cheated by mislabelling. But in the present hard economic times many consumers must be asking if it is their own government that is presenting them with the biggest con – making them pay the highest prices in the world for an essential and sacred staple.
