Japan ' s food self-sufficiency rate in caloric terms fell to 37 per cent in the 2025 fiscal year, a record low. Food security was again of concern, as the rounded data published by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan decreased by 1 percentage point from the previous year and was below the low levels of the previous 2020 fiscal year.
Rice shortages push up imports
Rice was one of Japan’s most representative home-grown staples, but this time it became a drag. As a result of inadequate supply and a marked rise in retail prices, consumers and businesses began to turn to imported rice, and some of Japan ' s large supermarkets have been loaded with rice from California, United States.
In 2025, Japanese private rice imports rose to 96,834 tons, about 95 times the previous year. In particular, the United States supply reached 75,638 tons, or approximately 78 per cent of total imports. Even though private imports of rice are usually subject to customs duties of 341 yen per kilogram, the scale of imports is significantly increased.
The government put in the emergency reserves.
During periods of supply constraints, the Government of Japan had also released hundreds of thousands of tons of emergency reserves to ease market pressure. At that time, retail rice prices rose to about twice that of the same period of the previous year, indicating that domestic supply and demand imbalances were clearly transmitted to the end markets.
This also suggests that the decline in food self-sufficiency is not just a change in the statistical caliber, but a parallel change in the structure of staple food supply, prices and imports. For an economy that has long relied on global supply chains, the core category of rice fluctuates and has a more representative impact.
The target for 2030 is still a long way from here.
The Government of Japan hopes to increase food self-sufficiency by 45 per cent in calorie terms and 75 per cent in output terms by 2030. However, this caloric caloric caliber indicator has been below 40 per cent for more than a decade in a row, leaving a significant gap from the target.
In contrast, the rate of food self-sufficiency in terms of output increased by 2 percentage points to 66 per cent in the 2025 fiscal year. This is mainly due to higher domestic food prices, which boost the nominal value of Japan ' s agricultural output, but does not mean that real supply capacity has improved simultaneously.
Japanese agriculture is also facing a continuing contraction of the labour force. In 2026, the number of core agricultural workers in Japan was estimated at 987,000, with an average age of 67.7 years. In addition to addressing the immediate rice shortage, Japan needs to address long-term pressures such as an ageing agricultural population, limited domestic capacity and high import dependence.