Rice fields fell from a peak of 3.4 million hectares (13.1 square miles) of land in 1961 to 2.3 million hectares (8,880 square miles) in 2024, while the number of households farming rice dropped ...

Sanjō (Japan) (AFP) – All is calm at Satoshi Yamazaki's rice farm, with its freshly planted rows of vivid-green seedlings, but a row over the cost of the staple in Japan is threatening to deal ...

Taniguchi Daichi, a rice farmer in the southwestern prefecture of Fukuoka, made a major decision amid growing demand. Taniguchi's rice fields in Fukuoka Prefecture. Last year, of the 23 hectares ...

OYAMA, Japan (AP) — Eri Yoshida sat in the dugout of an all-dirt baseball field in rural Japan, surrounded by rice paddies, narrow roads, and traditional Japanese houses. The scene recalled ...

Browse here. Last year, Japan recorded a poor rice harvest nationwide because of exceptionally hot weather. Ministry data showed the country’s private-sector rice inventory fell to 1.56 million tons ...

Urbanites flock to paddies to get rice, connect with farming By JUNKO WATANABE/ Staff Writer June 12, 2025 at 07:00 JST ...

With Japan mired in a rice crisis, the government is considering revising rice farming policies to increase production in its basic economic policy for the next fiscal year, which the Cabinet is ...

Sanjō (Japan) (AFP) – All is calm at Satoshi Yamazaki's rice farm, with its freshly planted rows of vivid-green seedlings, but a row over the cost of the staple in Japan is threatening to deal ...

Adding to the crisis is Japan's aging population. Many rice farmers are old and their children have no interest in taking over. Eighty percent of rice farmers are part-time with less than two hectares ...

Analysts also blame Japan's decades-old policy of cutting back on rice-farming land. To help ease the pain for consumers and restaurants, the government started tapping emergency stockpiles. (AP pic) ...

Eighty percent of rice farmers are part-time with less than two hectares of fields but they account for only 20 percent of production, said agronomy expert Kazunuki Oizumi, professor emeritus of ...