[RayChuang88]

The problem with growing rice in Asia is that their hanging on to traditional farming methods is slowing down rice production. They're nothing like American rice growing, where modern farming methods with special machines designed to work in muddy rice fields, modern use of fertilizers and modern irrigation methods ensures very high yields on a per farmer basis.

In fact, many specialty rice sold in Japan are starting to come from Arkansas and Texas, where such specialty rice could be grown on a large scale and still sell at a nice profit in Japan even after import duties.

[count-your-change]

So true! Most of the world gets about half the yield per acre that the U.S. produces. I don’t have up to date figures but in the southeast U.S. perhaps 3 to 3.5 tons per acre while world ave.is close to 1 to 1.5 tons per acre.

[muawiyah]

The Japanese heavily subsidize the cultivation of the inferior grades of rice that will grow well in a temperate climate.

They keep down imports from the US to keep internal demand high for the inferior rice.

Problem with this article is that biofuels have no impact whatsoever on rice production in the US, and the US crop is still only 1/10 of the production of all exported rice in the world.

Increased demand combined with reduced rice production due to Global Cooling is the cause.