Rice Determinant In Japan

Japan’s unique cuisine, which has a long history, is based on seafood, vegetables, beef, noodles but many Japanese dishes are made of rice. About a half a century ago, rice was enjoyed only on special occasions, such as during some festivals, ceremonies, at funerals and weddings. However, today white rice is one of the most used ingredients in Japanese meals. As this indispensable type of food is consumed in daily Japanese diet, the largest part of its agriculture is aimed at production of rice. Every year, almost all of Japanese farms cultivate rice. In spite of the shortage of farmland, Japan is the ninth largest rice producer among other rice producing countries in the world today.

According to The World Fact Book (2012-2013), Japan’s

Especially in agriculture, disasters such as floods, typhoons, and cyclones do play an influential role in production process because they are often difficult to predict accurately or sometimes impossible to prevent. In the case of rice, this determinant may decrease the supply in the market considerably. For example, according to Donald Seekins (2009), in 2008, the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, which is situated in Southeast Asia encountered deadliest hurricane ever, which is called Cyclone Nargis. This disaster brought a lot of damage to the economy of Myanmar in terms of agriculture. In particular, it caused a rice shortage (Sharp decline in supply of rice) and famine in the country. Due to the United Nations’ FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization), almost 65% of the country’s paddies were devastated by Nargis. The second potential non-price determinant could be advancement in technology. It is known that today modern tools, machineries are used in any area of agriculture in order to increase the sufficiency of land, improve the quality and supply more goods in the market. Japan’s agriculture can be a good example. Japanese farmers use small rototiller-tractors to plow the land and rice planters to plant rice seedlings. These machineries help to reduce cultivating time and labor cost which eventually causes cheaper but good quality rice supply in the country. In addition to non-price determinants of supply, one of the non-price determinants of demand could be preferences of consumers. Efferson (1985) states that ‘The quality of rice demanded by one community may be completely unacceptable to another’ (p.1). Japanese people can be a good example for this prospective. “Japanese consumer prefers well-milled, very recently processed, short