Japan's farm ministry plans to repurchase rice it released from state reserves in 2025, responding to farmers' warnings of a price collapse, Kyodo News reports, citing sources close to the matter.

The move would partly reverse an emergency intervention that flooded the market last year, when shortages pushed supermarket prices above JPY4,000 ($25.1) per 5 kilograms and made rice a politically charged commodity in Japan. Prices have since fallen back to around JPY3,000, and a bumper crop has left the country facing the opposite problem.

The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries intends to conduct the buyback in September, after confirming 2026 production conditions using statistics due next week and convening a meeting of experts.

The ministry released a total of 590,000 tons of stockpiled rice during 2025 to ease shortages. Reserves now stand at 320,000 tons. Even counting grain to be secured from the 2026 harvest, the total would reach only 530,000 tons, roughly half the level of 1mn tons the ministry considers appropriate.

Inventories of 2025 rice remain large while newly harvested grain is starting to reach the market, making the surplus increasingly visible. Private-sector rice stocks hit a record 2.43mn tons at the end of June, helped by higher output in 2025.

The ministry estimates that if the 2026 crop comes in as expected, production will total 7.32mn tons, above projected demand of 6.93mn to 7.11mn tons.

Farm minister Norikazu Suzuki had pressed for an announcement on the buyback by late July, but Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi took a cautious position, saying such a step would work against efforts to curb inflation.

At an experts meeting held on July 28, the ministry said it would "assess supply and demand, including the outlook for the 2026 crop."