” small Japanese rice farms “
I’m talking rural folks who have reg. jobs but have a little farmland so grow rice to use for their families and sell the remainder . These farms account for the majority of “ rice farms “ in Japan .
As a side note. During the 90’s I flew from SFO to Narita four times a year. On every trip I was approached at SFO to be a rice mule for some Japanese citizen. No sweat. You pay at the counter and the bag of rice is loaded on the plane, unloaded and delivered to a station at the Narita. Only catch was I had to claim it. I started charging $25 for the “service”. As I recall there is a 100kg/year limit so a 50 lb bag four times a year was under that.
Ah, then it’s even more inefficient than I thought. (Believe me, I know - my family does some gardening, and while it works out ok for us, if our time is factored in, it’d never be practical on this scale to sell into the U.S. food supply...)