Farming, fishing, livestock and forestry in Japan.
Rausu, Rishiri, hosome, ma-kombu: four kelps sold under four names and four price tiers. A Hokkaido University team read the DNA of 475 plants and found no genetic line between them.
Warming seas pushed a pufferfish north across the Tsugaru Strait, and the hybrids do not fit Japan's 1983 table of edible species and parts. How the rulebook caught up, and why the Mediterranean has the same gap.
Murakami's salmon run fell from 55,000 fish to 1,400 in a decade. Now the town is spending about $32,000 to attempt what Norway and Chile have not: closing the life cycle of chum salmon entirely on land.
A kawakawa hybrid made bluefin tuna sperm at eight months, and rainbow trout now spawn Chinook salmon yearly. Inside Japan's 20-year surrogate broodstock effort and Kindai's 32-year tuna project.
Pacific fishing nations agreed on August 18, 2026 to raise the quota for bluefin tuna over 30 kilograms by 25 percent, to 14,836 tons in the western Pacific, and to cut the quota for juveniles by 6 percent.
Japan's 2025 seafood output fell to 3,577,400 tonnes, the lowest since 1956, while FAO puts world production at 235 million tonnes. Comparing quota rules with Norway and the US shows why fewer fishermen isn't the answer.
Japan's calorie-based food self-sufficiency fell to a record-low 37% in fiscal 2025 while the production-value measure rose to 66%. A 48% rise in rice prices moved both. By production value, Japan ranks above the US.
Japan's food exports hit 897.7 billion yen (about $5.7 billion) in the first half of 2026, a record. Green tea rose 83.5% and yellowtail 69.0%, but the yen was 5.5% weaker, so about half the growth was currency.
Kyushu Electric has grown and cured Japan-made vanilla beans in a Fukuoka greenhouse, branding them Carol Vanilla. With a pollination gun and an automated curing machine, the utility is taking on the world's second most expensive spice, and Japan's 90%-plus import dependence.
Aquaponics rarely pays as a standalone farm. So how does Aomori's closed-school project plan to make money? By monetizing the cafe, tours, education and welfare work around the tank, backed by public funds.
In 2002, Japan's Kindai University pulled off the world's first full-cycle bluefin tuna farming. Two decades on, the major seafood companies are walking away and commercial output is fading. The irony: the headwind is the recovery of wild tuna stocks. A look at the gap between sustainable and profitable.