Japan Rice & Farm Prices
Contract Prices by Origin and Variety
The volume-weighted average price actually contracted between shippers handling 5,000 tonnes a year or more and wholesalers, in yen per 60kg bag of brown rice, including freight, packaging and consumption tax. The all-brand average is published by the Ministry and weighted by the previous crop year's inspected quantity; it is shown as released and is not recomputed from the brands beside it. A brand-month with no contract, or with under 100 tonnes contracted, is not published and stays a gap in the line.
Price Against Cost of Production
What a crop sold for against what it cost to grow, per 60kg, by crop year. Three cost levels are published and all three are shown: total spend, cost after the straw and other by-products are netted off, and full cost with interest on the farmer's own capital and rent on the farmer's own land imputed. A price can sit above the first and below the third. The price line is the mean of the twelve monthly contract prices for that crop's marketing year, September to August — a calculation, and its formula is below.
Private Rice Inventories
End-of-month stocks of brown rice held by the trade, in ten thousand tonnes. Rice still on the farm and the government reserve are both outside this table. Within each stage the current crop and one-year-old rice are itemised; rice two years old and older sits in the stage total with no row of its own, so the parts do not add to the whole and are not meant to. The current crop is a real zero before the harvest, not a gap.
Farm Output and Input Prices
What farmers are paid and what farmers pay, on one index base. The third view divides the first by the second: the farmer's terms of trade, which is a calculation and carries its formula. This is the confirmed annual report, published more than a year after the year it covers, so it is the deepest public history of Japanese farm-gate and input prices rather than a timely indicator. Input prices run from April 1957 and output prices from April 1963.
Brand Detail
Every 産地品種銘柄 the Ministry has priced, on its latest published month. Prices are official; the changes and the twelve-month average are calculated from them. A brand the Ministry has stopped pricing keeps its history and is marked with the month it was last published, so a frozen line is never read as a current one.