AGA, Japan — For decades, Japan has defended its 778 percent tariffs on rice with a kind of religious zeal. Rice is a sacred crop, the government has argued, not open to trade negotiations. Its farmers are not just defenders of a proud agrarian heritage, but form the nation’s spiritual center as well.

Hardly, says Hiromitsu Konsho, a young organic rice farmer in this rice-growing region of Niigata. Many Japanese farmers have all but given up on their tiny plots, he says. They earn most of their income elsewhere, farming only part time and paying little attention to improving their crops.

Yet, kept on life support by subsidies, production controls and tariffs, these farmers grow mediocre rice year after year, he says. Now an increasing amount of this rice has nowhere to go, as Japanese favor bread over their traditional staple. The government will soon raise subsidies that encourage farmers to divert their rice to animal feed.

More enterprising farms face difficulty in expanding their plots or experimenting with more sustainable cultivation, steps that would let them better compete in a free market.