MARIKO Watanabe admits she could have chosen a better time to take up baking. This week, when the Tokyo housewife visited her local Ito-Yokado supermarket to buy butter to make a cake, she found the shelves bare.
“I went to another supermarket, and then another, and there was no butter at those either. Everywhere I went there were notices saying Japan has run out of butter. I couldn’t believe it — this is the first time in my life I’ve wanted to try baking cakes and I can’t get any butter,” said the frustrated cook.
Japan’s acute butter shortage, which has confounded bakeries, restaurants and now families across the country, is the latest unforeseen result of the global agricultural commodities crisis.
I haven’t been noticing any food shortages lately. . . Anyone else?
Thanks to Richard Chmura.
Some of the “Warehouse” stores in the US have started “rationing” the selling of large bags of rice (which is ridiculous as the US has plenty of rice!), but I haven’t seen any real shortages.
If she’s baking, couldn’t she use margarine? Tastes mostly the same, and gets the same job done.
And a lot cheaper, and not dependent on milk.
Apart from rice, Japan imports much of its foodstuffs. The butter crisis confounded bakeries, restaurants and now families across the country, is the latest unforeseen result of the global agricultural commodities crisis. A sharp increase in the cost of imported cattle feed and a decline in milk imports, both of which are typically provided in large part by Australia, have prevented dairy farmers from keeping pace with demand.
Just two years ago, a vast milk surplus in Japan forced local dairy farmers to literally pour raw milk down the drain and kill off excess dairy cows. According to the Asahi Shimbun, domestic production accounted for 86 percent of Japan’s butter as recently as 2006, but after the painful resolution of the glut, butter production plunged.
Last week, as the prices of wheat and barley continued their relentless climb, the Japanese Government discovered it had exhausted its ¥230 billion budget for the grains with two months remaining. It was forced to call on an emergency ¥55 billion reserve to ensure it could continue feeding the nation. This was the first time the Government has had to take such drastic action since the war,” said Akio Shibata, an expert on food imports, who warned the Agriculture Ministry two years ago that Japan would have to cut back drastically on its sophisticated diet if it did not become more self-sufficient.
Japan, the world’s biggest net food importer, will ask the World Trade Organization as early as next week to introduce rules to prevent countries from restricting exports of wheat, rice and other grains.
Translation of a Japanese dairy farmer’s blog entry on the butter shortage: Where has all the butter gone?.
Two Novembers ago, there was so much rainfall and water sluicing down the rain-soaked valleys into the drinking water reservoirs that Vancouver had a ‘turbidity’ problem caused by organic crap like rotting leaves, sand, soil, pebbles and other stuff that usually stays on the bottom of river and stream beds but which was now overwhelming the filtration systems.
The only thing the Vancouver Water Board stated was use bottled water to wash your vegetables and to drink cold and and to boil tap water for 5 minutes for anything else.
So of course there were hysterical runs for bottled water at the big box stores all over the lower mainland. People buying +60 of the 2-litre bottles of water, Evian, mineral water, sparkling water, you name it.
Stores finally had to start rationing the stuff and, man, watching the way these idiots absolutely clawed at anyone getting close enough to their full pallets of water (that didn’t fit into their invariable BMW SUVs)… . It was depressing.
And for what? They didn’t want to boil the slightly cloud tap water for 5 minutes.
The water warning lasted a month. I bought about 4 bottles total. Hey, a little bit of organic crap was probably a natural laxitive, for all I know.
Oh, I have a couple of bags of rice, if anyone needs. You’ll have to pay the postage, though.
I’m gonna start selling butter on eBay and Yahoo! auctions.
Yeah, it’s frustrating ’cause I absolutely refuse to buy margarine. Also, I think everyone is thinking the same thing and is buying up double when it comes in. Those Obachan’s are a shrewd bunch.
The obachans are an excitable bunch, unburdened by the weight of analytical thinking, and are a huge contributing factor to any ’shortage’ scare in Japan.
We are happily swimming in butter in Fukuoka. Shortage? What shortage? Seems every reporter in Tokyo shops at the same supermarket.
This might be a bad sign for serious global agricultural commodities crisis in the future that will attack Japan, the world’s biggest net food importer.
” According to one government poll, 80% of Japanese are frightened about what the future holds for their food supply.”
80% of the Japanese are frightened about whatever the news media tells them to be frightened about. And that percentage is almost as high in most Western countries.
Since the global warming hysteria is starting to crumble, I think they just fished around for a new angle to keep the sheeple occupied.
Japan has good reason to be frightened about global agricultural commodities crisis.
Japan relays on more that 90% of wheat, maize and soybeans on supplies from America, Australia, etc, including livestock feed. Without them, there will be almost no domestic productions of bread, wheat products, meat, egg, milk products, soybeans products.
When Japan had to live only with domestic grains, Japanese could eat bread, milk products, wheat noodles, tofu, natto, miso, meat and egg probably just once or twice a week, and Japanese main diet would be rice, vegetables and fish like in Edo period.
Also the global warming hysteria should not be ignored, as it’s a serious issue in long range like IPCC report says.
Commodities are commodities. Unless there’s a blockade, Japan is facing the same issue as Hawaii or Las Vegas, which is rising prices. If you want some more food, why don’t you use all that vacant farmland that is going for almost nothing? I don’t recall meeting any young people recently who want to be farmers.
Regarding the IPCC, maybe you should familiarize yourself with it. They are very politically charged, and very unscientific.
I agree. Before blockade we would face rising prices of commodities anywhere in the world. And then Japanese have to use all that vacant farmland. Anyway, countries which are more self-sufficient don’t have to worry about blockade.
I have no idea about ” how IPCC are politically charged “. Regarding its science, they said ” 90% of probability “.
It will be interesting to see if rising commodity prices make farming more attractive to young people. I personally doubt it since it involves all three K’s (kiken, kitanai, kitsui–dangerous, dirty, difficult). I suspect Japanese ag will also move to larger sizes (ag business instead of family farms/plots/cooperatives) as they’ll be able to plow under the dead rural towns in another decade or so and convert them all into farms (yes, I’m partially joking).
It is no longer possible to be self-sufficient for most countries. Japan can’t return to its old way of eating because the oceans are being depleted. There’s simply too many people competing for ever decreasing resources. As China and India (and other developing countries) gain economic power, the people want to live a richer life with better food and other things. I think I read somewhere that the best sushi no longer goes to Tokyo. It is going to Shanghai, Hong Kong, New York and LA. Makes me glad that I like the cheap sushi!