Some ploblems of rice

Hello, everyone. This is a last time. Today, I will talk about some problems of rice.

First, modern Japanese don’t eat too much rice because kind of staple food has increased in Japan. It has begun to change Japanese life style since around 1965. Many foods is importing from abroad. They began to eat a lot of meat and fish. Opportunity to eat rice was reduced. So people began a new attempt.  

It is rice flour. It looks similar to wheat flour. It is used instead of wheat flour. Bread using rice flour is soft and delicious. However it culture is not yet well known for the Japanese. It will be also used for other foods.

Second, the number of rice farmers has decreased in Japan. On 2010, the number of rice farmers is about 1159 million in Japan.　

Japanese fermers

Old people will do most of the agriculture. Rice farmers have a hard time every day. They can’t lest because they need to make a delicious rice. In addition, making rice isn’t profitable. So they need to do other works. For example, they do both agricultural and company work. They must have a lot of money to create the environment. Please remember to see week 4. Japanese young people will not want to do the farming.

People start some campaigns in order to increase the farmers. Farmers give rice fields cheaply to young people who are interested in rice farming. And the Japanese government will help people to start rice farming. There are also plans to export rice to other countries but the problem has not been solved yet. This is a very difficult problem.

the article of Fukushima's rice

Third, we were faced with a big problem on March 11. It is the nuclear accident of Fukushima. It gave a heavy blow to farmers. Harmful substance has got off to a rice field. They will not be able to harvest rice. It will take a long time to clean the rice fields. We haven’t found ways how to resolve yet. However the rice farmers want to go back Fukushima someday. I’m praying that their wishes come true.

Japanese are having a lot of problems but we will continue to eat in the future. Japanese can’t live without rice.

Thank you for reading all my articles. It was difficult for me but I could get a lot of knowledge about rice. I hope you eat rice in Japan if you haven’t eaten rice. You will be able to understand a little about the culture of Japan. Food and culture are closely involved.

Goodbye, and please attention to your body.