In the suburbs of Tokyo, rice farmer Koichi Yuge is weighing how the government's change of heart on controlling rice prices will impact his 300-year-old family business.
Yuge, who grows the Koshihikari brand of rice on 6 hectares of paddies in the city of Abiko, Chiba Prefecture, said he's worried that the government's recent decision to scrap traditional controls on rice production could cause supplies to surge amid slipping demand, lowering prices even further.
The 48-year-old Yuge is a typical rice grower in Japan: a small-scale, part-time farmer who often finds himself at the whim of changes in government policy.