Japan's Food Self-Sufficiency Ratio Resists Improvement

Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries announced on September 16, 2004 that it is unlikely to achieve a goal set in March 2000 in its Basic Plan that calls for improvement in Japan's food self-sufficiency ratio to 45 percent (in terms of calories) by fiscal 2010. The Ministry has pushed the target year ahead 5 years, to fiscal 2015.

Japan's food self-sufficiency ratio has been declining: It was 88 percent in 1946, 73 percent in 1965, and dropped to 40 percent in fiscal 2003. Japan is now the world's largest net importer of food.

There are three major causes for the decline in the food self-sufficiency ratio: one is the restaurant industry's strategy of seeking lower costs by using imported food; another involves the westernization of the Japanese diet, which has resulted in a decline in rice consumption although rice production is sustainable in the country; and the third is increased consumption of meat, poultry and other fatty foods, which require huge amounts of feed grains or large expanses of agricultural land for their production.

Annual rice consumption has dropped by roughly half, from 118.3 kg per capita in FY 1962 to 61.9 kg per capita in FY2003. Meanwhile, per capita meat consumption in FY 1960 was 5.2 kg, tripling to 28.2 kg in FY2003.

The Ministry adopted a policy aimed at improving the food self-sufficiency ratio by encouraging a return to a well-balanced Japanese-style diet, but unexpected factors have emerged after it established its Basic Plan in 2000, such as an ongoing decline in rice consumption and increase in fat and oil consumption. The food self-sufficiency ratio remains unchanged at 40 percent, because domestic production of wheat, soybeans and sugar has increased while production of many other items such as feed grains has decreased.



Posted: 2005/02/25 04:19:47 PM
Japanese version