The agriculture ministry has announced that Japan's calorie-based food sufficiency rate in fiscal 2018 has fallen to a record low 37 percent. The rate is calculated by dividing domestic food production by the amount of food consumed, including imports.
Given today's style of food consumption, characterized by the habit of eating to satiation while wasting massive volumes of leftover food, it is only natural that the rate is low since the denominator is large.
If the modest style of food consumption that was prevalent 40 years ago was used as a premise, the rate would rise greatly even with today's level of output. Depending on the size of the denominator, the rate goes either up or down.