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.