Food Self-Sufficiency

June 5, 2000

The Japanese government recently decided on a target of raising the food self-sufficiency rate–that is, the ratio of food consumed daily by the Japanese that is supplied by domestic production–to 45% by fiscal 2010, a five-percentage-point increase over the fiscal 1998 level of 40%. The goal is based on the idea of food security, by which a country should endeavor to ensure the minimum necessary supply of food in case of poor harvests at home or abroad caused by such factors as abnormal weather conditions, or in case of an unexpected situation, such as a state of war. Japan is the first developed country to set a numerical target for food self-sufficiency. From now on the government will make all-out efforts to increase the production of agricultural and other products. But it will face many issues in trying to reach the target, as the main causes of the decline in the self-sufficiency rate are, after all, such factors as a shift to Western-style eating habits and a near-zero recycling rate for leftovers, nearly all of which are discarded as waste. Web Japan

10 April 2008 IPS “The only way for China to be spared the consequences of global food shortages and food price hikes is to remain firmly self-sufficient,” declared an emphatic editorial in the 21st Century Economic Herald last week.

The warnings come as the whole of Asia is rattled by the surge in the price of rice — the continent’s food staple. Prices have doubled since January, prompting Asian farmers to hoard rice, while export bans have sliced off a third of the global rice trade.

As far as I know, we have no policy at all on this. The best figures I could find suggest we currently only produce 60% of what we eat. That really does not seem wise.