More on overpriced rice
October 30, 2007
By Ken Worsley
Last week we wrote about lowered demand and overproduction in this year’s rice crop, which has led to price decreases at wholesale auctions. In an effort to boost prices on behalf of rice farmers, the government was set to purchase 230,000 tons of rice for what I call the nation’s “Strategic Rice Reserves” (the government calls it a “stockpile”, which reminds me of nuclear weapons and sounds a bit negative).
On Sunday, Phillip Brasor had a thought provoking piece on this issue published in the Japan Times. I will quote a bit here, but the whole article needs to be read:
Should Japanese people eat more rice? Again, the voters at home overwhelmingly sided with the farmers: yes, they should. But a number of people in the studio took issue with the question itself.
“Why can’t I eat anything I want?” asked one student, even though he said he ate more rice than the national average. And Honma seemed offended. “That question is pointless,” he said. Whether or not Japanese people “should” eat rice was irrelevant to the debate, since you couldn’t do anything about people’s preferences in a free society.
When free choice and open markets get in the way, it’s time for the PR and marketing people to ramp it up. We’re wondering what sort of campaign the Ministry of Truthiness Agriculture might be whipping up…
Filed Under Agriculture, Japan, Supply & Demand
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you couldn’t do anything about people’s preferences in a free society.
That’s not strictly true. Restrict rice imports severely enough and long enough, and people will substitute to cheaper grains. Eventually they’ll develop a taste for those other grains, and demand for rice will fall, lowering prices. I think this is what we see happening.
Fully agreed Noah…there are plenty of ways to influence and change people’s preferences in a free society. Appeals to emotion, control of supply, etc…the rice issue should produce more interesting results than the whale meat case has thus far.
I talked to one of the Japanese guys I worked with about the stockpiling of rice and his comment was that the Japanese government is crazy and that it will waste billions of yen. He stated that gogn on past experience, the rice will sit in the store for a while, the government will then decide that it is old and sell it as animal food to the farmers (or try to give it as food aid to some country and tell everyone the cost of he aid based on the original price of the rice).
My friend was disgusted that it happens but had the Japanese attitude of “Shouganai”.
David, sounds like your friend should help out by being more patriotic and eating more rice.
Domestic rice.
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[…] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptLast week we wrote about lowered demand and overproduction in this year’s rice crop, which has led to price decreases at wholesale auctions. In an effort to boost prices on behalf of rice farmers, the government was set to purchase … […]