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| Wheat field in Tsukuba, Japan. photo by N. Larzalere. |
More than 100,000 Japanese farmers plant wheat or barley,
and wheat is grown in paddy fields throughout Japan and
on upland fields on Hokkaido, the northernmost and second-largest
island.
Wheat production peaked at about 1.7 million metric tons
in the early 1960s before dropping sharply to about 200,000
metric tons in the 1970s. Since then, production has
gone back up to more than 850,000 tons in 2003. (Japan
Statistical Yearbook, Chapter 7).
Still, Japan imports each year about 5.5 million metric
tons, nearly 90 percent of the wheat the Japanese consume,
and Japanese millers believe that domestic wheat is of
inferior quality. To preserve the domestic wheat-growing
capability, the Japanese government has heavily subsidized
wheat farmers in two ways: by direct subsidies and by
controlling the importation of wheat, which it then sells
to domestic millers at a heavy markup, with the profits
used to pay for the subsidies themselves.
All this comes at a high cost to consumers, who pay
an estimated $800 million a year premium for wheat
above
what free market prices would cost. In stores, this
translates into shoppers paying 70 to 80 cents
a pound for flour
in Tokyo, where shoppers in the U.S. Northeast pay
30 cents a pound. For another example, Japanese
farmers
receive more than $30 per bushel for the wheat they
grow, while U.S. growers get from $2.62 to $3.56
per bushel.
Wheat is more expensive to grow in Japan than in
many other countries, and some analysts say the
Japanese domestic
production would plummet if exposed to free market
competition. (Fukuda, Dyck, and Stout 14).
Next: Kansas Wheat Production
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The Japanese government has encouraged efforts to
grow better wheats and counter millers’ beliefs
that the domestic crop is inferior. One new noodle
variety,
Sanuki Dream 2000, was being touted as superior to
the Australian white wheat often used by udon noodle
makers
(Australian Broadcasting Corp.).
Wheat production has been encouraged as an alternative
to rice, which was overproduced in the 1960s and 1970s,
because of its nutritional value. "Wheat, barley,
and soybeans have been favored because MAFF (Ministry
of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries) is trying to
raise the caloric self-sufficiency of Japanese agricultural
production, one of the goals set down by the Food Basic
Law in 1998,” according to a U.S. Department
of Agriculture report (Fukuda, Dyck, and Stout 6).
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| Wheat field in Ibakaki, Japan. photo by N. Larzalere. |
The Japanese, through the government grains agency,
import about 5.5 million metric tons of wheat each
year. The
majority of the wheat, about 3.1 million tons, comes
from the United States, with Canada supplying 1.5 million
tons and Australia about 1.1 million tons.
Japan’s imports of American wheat have dropped
slightly in recent years because Japanese millers have
come to favor Australia’s white wheat for noodlemaking,
which is one major reason why the U.S. wheat industry
has pushed the development of a wheat called hard white
(Midwest Shippers Association).
Japanese millers still buy great quantities of American
wheat, though, and will likely continue to purchase
bread-making varieties like hard red wheat, the kind
that makes up
virtually all of Kansas’ production.
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| Advertisement for wheat flour pita wrap, Japan.
photo by N. Larzalere. |
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