Why farmers should have confidence in their own agricultural products

8 years ago, China lifted its 4-year-long ban on rice imports from Japan. Among the first batch of rice Japan resumed exporting to China, two brands were very well known: one called "Koshihikari" and one called "Hitomebore." They became famous because they sold for too much: at the time, the two were priced at 198 yuan/Kg and 188 yuan/Kg respectively. It was also from that time that the term "sky-high rice" came into being.

Now that old story is being brought up again, and the trigger is that "Hitomebore," one of the main players in the "sky-high rice" affair back then, has reappeared and once again become a hot topic of public attention. Of course, times have changed, and the focus of the new discussion is somewhat different: first, "Hitomebore" rice is not sold in the domestic market, but is bought by domestic consumers from the Japanese market; second, many people are talking about the sky-high rice matter, but in fact they do not know that the current protagonist, "Hitomebore," is exactly the "Hitomebore" of those years.

Here is what happened: after the widely discussed "reversal" story that "the toilet lids Chinese people went to Japan to buy turned out to be made in Hangzhou," another media report said that "the sky-high rice that Chinese people buy from Japan at 300 yuan/Kg is actually produced in Northeast China, called 'Hitomebore,' and sells locally for as little as 6 yuan/Kg." This is clearly more of a "comeback" and more dramatic than the former, and it was like throwing an even bigger stone into the pond of public opinion.

It has been hyped up quite noisily, but just as people do not know that "Hitomebore" is "Hitomebore," most of those expressing opinions, as non-industry insiders, are mostly speaking layman's words laden with all kinds of emotions, and the social effect of such words is of course hard to call positive. For example, some people drag food safety into this matter, believing that consumers go to Japan to buy sky-high rice because they do not trust the domestic food safety environment; even if they run abroad and bring back a domestic product, this kind of behavior of not knowing what one is buying and being a sucker can still reflect this mentality among some Chinese people.

As the saying goes, the expert sees the trick. The trick in this matter is actually not hidden very deep; one can understand it by looking up some materials online. With these materials as a foundation, and knowing the deeper background, looking at this matter again will make it seem entirely in line with market logic and perfectly normal. Japan imports very little rice; this is not aimed only at China, as rice from other countries also has a hard time entering the Japanese market. Some say this is because Japan's food safety standards are too strict, but that is only a surface phenomenon. The real reason is that Japan wants to protect its own agriculture and farmers. Although Japan's intensive farming produces high-quality agricultural products, the costs are too high and the market prices are also too high. Such products are uncompetitive in an open market. Once Japan opens up imports, the vast majority of its farmers would go bankrupt. Many rice-producing countries, including the United States, South Korea and Thailand, have argued with Japan for years, demanding that Japan be more open on rice, but Japan rarely gives ground. It is not that it does not want to, but that it does not dare to.

However, despite such protection, Japan still has to import 770,000 tons of foreign rice each year, because this is a WTO requirement and must be fulfilled. Among the 100,000 tons tendered for import as staple food rice, Chinese rice is relatively popular and accounts for a fairly large share. Looking at Japan's rice export volume, by contrast, it is pitifully small. According to data from the National Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Associations of Japan, Japan's total rice exports to China in 2014 were 160 tons, while in 2013 it was only 80 tons. If policy did not control it, Japanese rice dealers would not be willing to pay high prices for domestic rice at all; they would prefer to use foreign rice that is cheap and of stable and safe quality.

From this, it can be seen that the matter of Chinese people "frantically" buying sky-high rice in Japan is largely hyped. Just as Japanese people are willing to see this phenomenon but do not understand why, many of us are unwilling to see it yet also unclear about the facts. Some media use the word "frantic" to describe the incident, which is largely subjective and arbitrary and therefore misleading. In fact, there were not many Chinese people buying sky-high rice at all, and to this day we have not seen any media outlet give an accurate figure.

As for some industry insiders using this matter to reflect on the development problems of the domestic rice industry, especially the insufficient brand building, that is actually of positive significance. Of course, even if our rice has this or that problem, we should still have confidence in our own products. After all, when Japanese people eat domestically produced rice that is also expensive, their feeling is more one of helplessness than pride. Perhaps they too are sighing: when will we be able to eat rice as cheap and good as China's?