Posted on 11/11/2013 10:04:55 PM PST by TexGrill
AKITA – A new company aiming to mediate between rice producers, mass merchants and consumers was established Monday, led by agricultural corporations in Akita Prefecture and the city of Sendai.
The move is part of efforts to prepare for rapid changes in the competitive environment for agriculture, including Japan’s participation in Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade talks and the planned abolition of rice production adjustments in five years.
The new firm is based in the village of Ogata, Akita Prefecture.
It was chiefly founded by Ogatamura Akitakomachi Seisansha Kyokai, an Ogata firm selling rice online to individual customers nationwide, and Butai Farm, a Sendai company working to promote large-scale rice farming and industrialize farming through combining production, processing and distribution including direct sales and restaurant management.
Toru Wakui, who heads the Ogata company, became the president of the new firm called the Rice Industry Organization of East Japan, or RIO East.
The new company hopes to expand rice sales, including to mass retailers and restaurants. It will determine demand so it can produce the appropriate amount and quality of rice.
It will lease farming equipment in cooperation with manufacturers and leasing firms for joint use by agricultural corporations and farmers across several prefectures. It has plans to develop a loan program for farmers in partnership with financial institutions.
(Excerpt) Read more at japantimes.co.jp ...
My cousin does really well rice farming on his smaller
acreage and custom farming for larger non- resident
property owners in the Central Valley north of Sacramento.
He is a hard worker and still pretty much a badass and
conservative in his mid 50s. When the Japanese are
buying his profits go from good to great.
Here in the Philippines, rice is to a Filipino as bread and water are to Americans. An automatic electric rice cooker is the most important appliance in the kitchen.
All market vendors sell numerous varieties by the kilo, scooped from large bins.
There is no such thing as a meal without rice.
I’d never eat any rice from Akita or anywhere else near Fukushima.
But you can buy glow-in-the-dark Fukushima rice at a discount. “Where stacking them deep and selling em cheap.”
I wonder how this will play out. After the war there was a large voting bloc of small farmers. This is an attempt to eliminate or lease land in order to do farming on the scale of Cal.
Wonder how it shakes out. They lost arable land to the tsunami (much still lies under acres of debris). They lost farm land to Fukushima exclusion zone and then farther from the plant, feed crops and tea and rice were found to be too radioactive (so they dilute it with non radioactive sources to get below their extremely high “safety limit”) to consume. Farmers with crops too contaminated were too often told by the government that they were NOT banned from selling their crops - which meant no compensation for farmers if they didn’t sell their radiation contaminated crops. (The government’s program only compensated farmers banned from selling crops) Some of those affected farmers said they felt “bad” selling contaminated crops but felt their was no alternative because there would be no compensation if they just plowed it under. So feed or rice crops affected by Fukushima were distributed to other regions and mixed with “clean” rice or feed - that must have been done to keep food prices down. So they have some “issues” going on and this is their attempt to address it, I guess.
Japan has (or had) laws against importing Calif rice. It’s religion. It’s also very expensive. Any traveler returning home brings with them 4-5 pounds of cal rose. Fukushima just might have changed all that. They may be in deep doo doo.
Interesting. Thank you for that insight.
I thought it would be culturally incorrect to be seen bringing home rice when Japanese rice is forcefully declared “better.” For example, I don’t know if Shiesedo cosmetics are still owned by a Japanese company but when it was, Japanese women (US citizens) would confront other Japanese women for purchasing (or even browsing) cosmetics from other (non-Japanese) brands - you must be loyal to Japan! They would say “Why are you looking at that brand when you know Shiesido is better!?” So, the culture, even in California was to support Japanese brands. I guesstimated that no one would be willing to be seen with US rice (maybe it’s concealed?) so it makes me think that there must be a strong desire to have Cal Rose if one is willing to face the skeptical glances of others?
You know that after Fukushima, “minimum safety limits” for radiation were raised by many countries (including the US) and that Hillary promised Japan that the US would continue to import products from Japan....which makes me think products rejected by local Japanese may be imported inexpensively in the US?
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