Japan Seeks New Rice Source

Consumers Worry That Domestic Harvest Could Be Contaminated With Radiation

TOKYO—Japanese consumers typically prefer fresh, home-grown rice, but that isn't true this year.
Demand has surged for remaining supplies of last year's harvest of the country's staple crop, as well as for foreign-grown grains. Shoppers worry that the latest domestic harvest may be contaminated with radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident.

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Farmers last month harvested rice in Sayo city, Hyogo prefecture. Demand has surged for supplies of last year's harvest of Japan's staple crop.

In Hyogo prefecture in western Japan, rice-store owner Toshikazu Nishira said online orders for U.S.-grown organic rice have jumped, despite steep tariffs on rice imports designed to protect the domestic market. In August, the orders, mostly from eastern Japan, were nearly 20 times more than normal, as people who couldn't find domestic rice from last year ordered imported rice, Mr. Nishira said.
"For the first time, Japanese people seem to be worried about domestic rice," said Mr. Nishira, who has been running the business for almost 30 years. "I have no idea how long this will last, and how it might turn out."
Fukushima prefecture, showered with radiation in March, is the fourth-largest rice-producing region in Japan. It is also a big supplier for Tokyo, where government tests for rice contamination are expected to be largely finished next week.
So far, one tested batch has turned up contamination near levels triggering a sales ban. But consumer advocates and others criticize the government's testing method.
Mariko Sano, secretary-general of Tokyo-based consumer group Shufuren, said the amount of contamination allowed is too high, because it is the same level for rice—which Japanese consume in quantities seven times greater than Americans—as it is for beef and other types of food eaten in smaller quantities. "The government seems to only tighten its rules after problems have occurred, and that is creating mistrust among consumers," she said.
Japan has gone through other food-safety scares since the nuclear accident, particularly the discovery this summer that contaminated beef had escaped testing and had been consumed throughout the country.
But the safety of rice is particularly important in Japan, a country where people pay as much as $1,000 for rice cookers flecked with silver, gold or diamond dust that promise to steam up the perfect bowl.
"Rice is more than just food," said Kazuhiko Kanno, who oversees Fukushima's testing as head of the prefectural government's rice-farming section. "It occupies a special place in Japan's culture and history."
Mr. Kanno said he has been deluged by calls from worried consumers, including a woman from Tokyo who asked whether it was safe to feed her children rice that her father-in-law sends from Fukushima. Mr. Kanno explained that the prefecture will forbid shipments—even as gifts—from areas found to have high levels of contamination.
Japanese officials conducted the first round of tests on rice fields in April, starting with one field per municipality in the areas surrounding the reactors, then increasing the number of test spots wherever they found elevated levels of radioactive cesium, the most common pollutant. The agriculture ministry set the limit for harvested rice at 500 bequerels per kilogram, and—estimating that up to 10% of the cesium in the soil would be transferred to the rice plant—banned cultivation in fields found to have more than 5,000 becquerels of cesium per kilogram of soil.
Now, Mr. Kanno's section is screening harvested grains. It has found high cesium levels from one area—the city of Nihonmatsu, about 34 miles from the plant—where the rice registered the maximum allowable 500 becquerels per kilogram.
That single discovery is troubling some experts, who say it raises questions about the government's testing model. Nihonmatsu's fields logged only 3,000 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium, meaning something else—perhaps contaminated water or direct contact between the rice plants and polluted mud—had boosted levels more than expected, said Keiko Tagami, a researcher at Japan's National Institute of Radiological Sciences who specializes in studying how radiation spreads through the environment.
The government ought to look for other such occurrences, she said. "They need to test more even if it means cutting into time for sleep," said Ms. Tagami.
Mr. Kanno said Fukushima prefecture is conducting additional tests in areas where conditions and surroundings are similar to those in Nihonmatsu.
But consumers appear wary. Big rice buyers, such as processing plants and wholesalers, haven't put in orders for Fukushima rice, according to a manager in the Fukushima branch of Japan's biggest agricultural cooperative. Fukushima's farmers likely won't be able to sell their rice unless they can assure buyers, through more testing, that it is safe, he said, though the co-op doesn't have the funds.
Demand for rice harvested last year—before the accident—soared in August as people stockpiled the pre-March 11 grain, said a manager at a big rice wholesaler. Now, some restaurants in eastern Japan are taking the unusual step of looking into purchases from western Japan, he said. A manager at a big national sushi chain that normally buys rice from Fukushima said it may not this year, especially after customers started calling its shops asking from where they buy their rice.
The price of rice futures contracts traded on the Tokyo Grain Exchange has plunged since September, when the goods to be delivered switched to this year's harvest from last year's, said Takuo Nanahara, a trader at commodities broker Yutaka Shoji Co. "Investors are waiting to see what happens" with the rice tests, he said.