Economy Soaring food prices: grow yourself or substitute

[thomas]

After decades of price stagnation, inflation has finally arrived in Japan, leaving consumers scrambling for clever ways to soften the blow. Cabbage, once a humble staple, now commands a king's ransom in Tokyo – its price has more than tripled in a year, a figure that would make even a seasoned economist blanch. While the Bank of Japan, ever optimistic, has nudged interest rates upwards, real wages have been on a downward spiral for what feels like forever, and the portion of household budgets devoted to food is at a 40-year high.

A single head of cabbage costing the equivalent of an hour's work? News of this culinary coup has already made waves. And as if that weren't enough, the central bank has ominously warned that rice, another dietary essential, will likely remain pricey until spring 2026. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given these sky-high costs, the nation's vegetable consumption has plummeted to an all-time low.

The solution: grow yourself.

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For YouTuber Kazuki Nakata, the recent price trends have proved to be a boon. Having started indoor farming at home as a hobby during the pandemic, the 37-year-old now has nearly 90,000 subscribers eager to learn how to stretch out store-bought vegetables and grow new ones in containers of water, without soil. "I've seen 4,500 new followers in the past two weeks," he told Reuters at his home in Kawasaki, outside Tokyo, this week. Nakata quit his job at an electronics retailer in 2023 to focus on the 47 types of vegetables he currently grows all over his house. Everything from shiso leaves, onions and daikon radish thrive in empty plastic bottles, beer cans and even the basket of his bicycle. Growing vegetables at home isn't without its challenges. Nakata's family has had to sleep without air conditioning on sweltering summer nights, and his wife complains that she can't breast-feed her newborn in the living room because the curtains need to be open to ensure the leafy greens get their sunlight. Still, with vegetable prices so high, Nakata says the sacrifices have paid off. He recently succeeded in cultivating a robust patch of cabbage leaves in a kitchen bowl using the inedible core and liquid fertilizers - the subject of his next video on YouTube.

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/homegrown-veg-cheap-substitutes-japanese-get-creative-fight-soaring-food-prices-2025-01-31/

Homegrown veg, cheap substitutes: Japanese get creative to fight soaring food prices | The Asahi Shimbun: Breaking News, Japan News and Analysis

Japanese look for creative ways to fight soaring food prices

As the price of agricultural products has risen, Japanese have also been eating less of them.

www.japantimes.co.jp