How much rice is imported from the US to Japan?
How does Brazil compare with the US for exports of rice to Japan?
You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$2 Answers
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4473714/
"Under World Trade Organization requirements, Japan imports at least 770,000 tons of rice a year. But nearly 90 percent of that is processed into rice crackers, soup paste and sauce."
Note: This post is older than the one above.
Here's another link that spells out the situation.
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/may2008/gb20080522_132137.htm
"As of last October, Japan's warehouses were bulging with 2.6 million tons of surplus rice, including 1.5 million tons of imported rice, 900,000 tons of it American medium-grain rice."
You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$
From;
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nb20090402a3.html
"In its 2009 National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said Japan's regulated rice import system "limits meaningful access" by foreign rice growers to Japanese consumers.
The trade report said Japan failed to meet the WTO rice-import quota in fiscal 2007, which ended last month, due to higher-than-normal global rice prices. The USTR was referring to the fact that Japan was supposed to import 770,000 tons of unmilled rice for the year but the amount purchased was about 70,000 tons short of that level."
You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$
Japanese rice is always considered far superior to any other rice according to the majority of Japanese people.
And so the price in the store is also typically much higher. I am going by personal experience and could be a bit off, because my in-laws own a rice farm and don't purchase rice. Though when my father in law came to the US for my wedding, he had his own rice shipped to our house so as not to have to eat that stuff from the store.
The Japanese government would not import any foreign rice if they weren't forced to.
I was aware that Japan had released its surplus rice (50,000 tons) to the Philippines.
I didn't know there was a rice shortage:
The country's heavily subsidized farmers produce more than enough to feed the country's 127 million people. Yet every year since 1995, Tokyo has bought hundreds of thousands of metric tons of rice from the U.S., Thailand, Vietnam, China, and Australia.
Do you think Foreign rice prices were lower than domestic rice prices in Japan?