Japan Rice Prices Increase: Updated Oct. 31, 2024

Japan's 2024 new rice price rises to 31-year high after summer heat

Article Source: https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20241019/p2g/00m/0bu/004000c

Ideas:

At some point governments need to implement temporary price controls on some essential everyday products such as rice, bread, milk and eggs. And then of course give temporary subsidies to producers or retailers of the products.

A price control means what is say, retailers and whomever can not increase the price more than the government mandated price that they think is needed to help citizens.

Also there should be price controls on these products if the growing season caused a significant shortage, and there should be a volume limit to be met for the price controls, and then of course give the producers a subsidy to cover their losses.

The Japanese government should due to maybe some not so good producers or other providers should monitor how much rice is actually supplied and its known, unfortunately, that producers will take advantage of a limited supply and try to price gouge the market, if not unchecked.

Rice is a major food product in Japan, and this past summer, friends of friends had significant challenges finding rice in the stores, because, as usual, there was a lot of hording before stores put a limit on how many bags buyers could buy at one time.

But of course, even then, some shoppers would go back the same day and try to buy more rice.

First off, there might have been 3 million foreign tourists in Japan in August and not all of them ate rice dishes, so it was unlikely, they alone would have caused a rice shortage.

Yes, of course, just like all businesses in Japan, production costs have increased as the weak Japanese yen might have caused production materials to be more expensive than usual.

And then there was the megaquake situation, which is normal, as some people might have gone out and tried to stock-pile needed products, including rice in August for fear of a possible earthquake.

People are going to people, meaning they have fears and worries so hording and stockpiling is a natural response to any situation sometimes.

But a government should try to help the citizens by finding ways to reduce stockpiling and hording as much as possible.

Have a nice day!