Rice production in Japan

While Japan's rice acreage shrinks, in order to prop prices in the market up, much of its country-side lays depleted and bare.

Paddy fields occupy much of the countryside, whether on the alluvial plains, the terraced slopes, or the swampland and coastal bays.

Nonrice farmland share the terraces and lower slopes and are planted with wheat and barley in the autumn and with sweet potatoes, vegetables, and dry rice in the summer.

Japan's strategy to protect the flooding of its rice market is to offer compensation to those who own land and agree to grow other commodities.

[7] Wet-field rice agriculture was introduced into Japan between the Final Jōmon and the Early Yayoi periods.

Currently the average rice farmer works only 1.65 acres (6680 square meters or 2/3 hectare), which is a little larger than a football field.

In addition domestic farm groups have long maintained that rice cultivation is part of Japanese culture.

Surprisingly, consumer groups have not actively supported the lifting of the ban in order to reduce the rice price.

[12] In the Uruguay Round of GATT (General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade) negotiations in 1990, Japan refused to give concessions in eliminating its ban on rice imports.