In 2021, Japan’s food self-sufficiency rate stood at 38 per cent — only marginally higher than the record low set in the previous year, and a far cry from the government’s target of 45 per cent self-sufficiency by 2030. And, since then, as the cost of imported ingredients — and even animal feed — has soared following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Japanese consumers’ sensitivity to high prices has only increased. The import model has been shown to be a food system for more predictable times. Increasingly, though, the national concern about food self-sufficiency is being overlaid with intensifying debates around sustainability. In particular, says Yoshihiro Sugiura, director of sales at Azuma Foods, the country is becoming more anxious about predictions of worldwide protein shortages — especially of its favourite and most celebrated marine products. These fears are only exacerbated by UN estimates that the world’s human population will reach 9.7bn by 2050.
Fisheries products are seen as especially at risk. Since 1974, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization has tracked the ratio of global fish stocks that are at biologically sustainable levels. When the survey began, the ratio stood at 90 per cent. By 2019, it had dropped to just 64.6 per cent. That collapse, says Sugiura, is of huge concern to a company such as Azuma, which began life as a traditional seafood trading company. “Global warming meant that the supply chain was unstable and we saw that it is not sustainable any more for ingredients, so we went to look for alternatives,” he says. The company has begun experimenting with ways of making authentic looking — and, eventually, tasting — seafood that does not rely on the use of animal products.
And Azuma is not alone in recognising the potentially huge demand for authentic alternative seafood. Even the Japanese giant Nippon Ham — a company that has been one of the nation’s foremost providers of animal products for years — has now entered the market for entirely non-meat alternatives. This year, the company introduced a product emulating fried fish but using soyabeans and seaweed extracts.