World rice production is up, but demand is up more. Production gains are not keeping up with population growth and increased consumption.

Where is all this new demand coming from that wouldn't have begun outstripping supply last year or the year before that? Population growth hasn't been explosive in the already over-populated regions of the world where rice is both the traditional staple and major agricultural commodity.

Japan over-produces rice, but can't really export (until now, perhaps) because it's government propped price has always been way higher than the average global price (something of a disconnect since not all rice is the same).

The U.S. eats relatively little rice and exports most of our crop.

Both the Japanese and Chinese eat a lot of wheat noodles, but the explanation for the shortage here has nothing to do with rice, and makes no sense anyway since wheat and corn are best produced in different climates. Therefore, increased ethanol production can't be used as an excuse for shortages of either.

Cambodia, before the end of the Vietnam War and the beginning of the Khmer Rogue regime, had been a next exporter. I have no idea what they do today. The same was once true of Thailand.

I hadn't read of any major crop failures last year, and this year's crop is just now sprouting or being transplanted the northern latitudes.

Not one for economic conspiracies, but there is more at work here than demand outstripping supply.

On Wednesday, Paul Krugman kicked things off by pondering the sad state of alternative energy technology development and concluding that, "For the last 35 years, progress on energy technologies has consistently fallen below expectations."

While we have actually made some significant strides in conservation based on energy consumption patterns that have existed since the middle of the previous century, we've made no meaningful progress with regards to developing any kind of practical and/or affordable alternative energy to replace fossil fuels.

I believe that if we'd stop wasting federal dollars on shit like manned space exploration and had recast our foreign policy/military posture after the collapse of Eastern Bloc and the Soviet Union, we'd have already seen significant progress toward a viable non-carbon fuel future.

Furthermore, you seem to be mistaken that Okinawa is actually part of Japan (BTW, that's an in crowd joke). Furthermore, the U.S. military would still probably bring in dairy goods and beef from elsewhere for a base even if it were next door to a dairy farm and a cattle ranch with it's own abattoir. Remember, this is the same organization that trucks gas and diesel in from Kuwait for use in Iraq.

I don't know about the rest of Japan, but I was in Okinawa in the middle 80s and there was no beef or dairy industry there at all. The US military was flying milk in from the Phillipines

-- IaintBacchu

Think of Okinawa as Guam or a poor version of Hawaii, and then you better understand it's relative physical isolation, and it's political, social and economic relationship to the rest of the country.

Where were you, confined to some remote fishing village on the Sea of Japan side of Tohoku?

But seriously, when did the Japanese diet become so much like ours? That has to be recently. I'll admit the last time I was in Japan was 1989, but my travels through the country left me a distinct impression that beef and butter were uncommon.-- cdunlea

I first ate at McDonlds in when I live in Naogay in 1979 (used to be my favorite place to quench a hangover - nothing quite like a couple of cheeseburgers, fries and a chocolate shake at ten in the morning). I know it had been in the country for several years before that.

When I last lived in Nagoya, the same year you last visited Japan, we had three pizza delivery options, one of them being Dominoes.

The contemporary Japanese diet is nearly as bad as the American diet, and maybe worse for all the salt. I predict that Japanese life expectancy will plateau here in the next couple of decades as the post-war generations excessive drinking, smoking and fattier diet catch up with them. The positive aspects of more dairy and meat (not just beef) in the Japanese diet are better teeth, stronger bones and, for what it's worth, greater height and girth.

. . . but I'm pretty sure that the Japanese consume more dairy per capita than anyone else in East Asia, and are probably second to S. Korea in beef consumption.

Beef and butter are not exactly staples in Japan, and many Japanese go their entire lives without eating either. Beef is atrociously expensive in Tokyo and is a status symbol of the rich. Butter is something used in Western-style restaurants and not part of traditional cooking.

Actually, very few Japanese go their entire lives without eating either beef or butter (though some Buddhist monks may abstain). Western-style baked goods, particularly French, are very popular, buttered toast is common at breakfast, McDonalds is ubiquitous in the metropolitan and suburban areas where the overwhelming majority of the population is centered, and three Japanese dishes, sukiyaki, shabu-shabu and tenpan-yaki, are made with (among other ingredients) beef.

Japan's topography has never lent itself to cattle herding (or herding at all).

Hokkaido, which very much resembles the PNW west of the mountains, has substantial dairy farms and wagyu, Japanese style beef, which is raised throughout the country, is more like veal thus requiring relatively little space (Japan imports most of its lower grade beef). The same is pretty much true of raising dairy cattle: it doesn't require the acreage you commonly see used in the semi-arid regions of the U.S. (and S. America) for raising beef cattle.

The Japanese diet, I believe, focuses on rice, vegetables, tofu and seafood . . .

The traditional Japanese diet, and rice consumption has declined yearly for a couple of decades now. However, the Japanese, particularly in the major metropolitan areas, are almost on par with N. American in terms of the variety of diet. Some of the best French and Italian (and Chinese, Thai and Indian) food I've ever had has been in Tokyo, Yokohama, Kobe, Osaka and Nagoya.

Regarding food, the Japanese are concerned about a much more serious threat to their food supply--the depletion of worldwide fishing stocks. That would be a far graver threat to Japan.-- cdunlea

This is true. However, they are also one of the primary culprits in this. The waters off Japan have been over-fished for decades. This is why the Japanese commercial fishing fleet travels all over the world.

As Japan's population continues to decline it will need to import less food. This should also lead to the long-overdue shift in commodity food production domestically.

Japan's agricultural is categorized as "intensive gardening." Anyone who has lived there can describe the pointlessly labor intensive and needlessly small scale of Japan's agriculture. Like India, Japan needed to rationalize agricultural production a couple of decades ago. Farmer population continues to decline, but Japan still has one of the highest percentages of population devoted to at least part-time agriculture. As with India, too many farmers equals too many small farms, and productivity is lower than it should be.

Japan's greatest challenge, like most of the world's, is energy.