NANYO, Japan — On a lush green plain bordered by mountains in northern Japan’s Yamagata prefecture, Nobuhiko Kurosawa does what 20 generations of his family have done before him: He grows rice.
Tending to seedlings under a piercing June sun, Kurosawa finds himself in territory unfamiliar to his predecessors, though. A shortage of the commodity kickstarted by an extreme 2023 heat wave — made more intense and more likely by human-caused climate change — has sent rice prices skyrocketing, doubling within a year. The year 2023 was Japan’s hottest on record at the time, only to surpassed by 2024, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.
