Japan grows enough food for only 1 in 3 of its people, reminder to appreciate food

I came across this show covering on Japan's food self-sufficiency crisis. Singaporeans love to visit Japan and rave about their food and how things are really fresh and they make many of their food with love and dedication. It is sad watching and learning that they used to had 73% of self sufficiency in terms of food but it dropped to 38% in recent years as more farmers choose to retire or had no choice due to ageing and with no successors. 

I was kind of shocked seeing this as I always had the impression that most of their produce are made in Japan however staples for them like Natto has it's main ingredient soya bean imported and also because of the past where imports were popular, some of the products were not farmed domestically and importing them was easier. But with the weakening yen, recent times have made them expensive to the locals.  

They mentioned that they have a self-sufficiency for meat at 65% however due to the feed being imported almost entirely, it brings the self-sufficiency to 17%. That is crazy if you think about it as the raw materials, the building blocks of the whole ecosystem for food is imported. Japan used to be able to farm quite sufficiently but various factors caused them to reduce. 

Rice is something that are local farmed but rice farming is something very much dependent on the weather and with changes in the climate, costs have gone up significantly. Farming rice has also become not profitable hence farmers have been switching and with that, grows a deficiency. 

I am sure that we have seen their beautiful fruits like melon, grapes and strawberries costing a bomb, with that some superficial grade where the ugly produce are sold cheaper and this brings about quality over quantity. This results in them throwing away the ugly food, causing much wastage. 

Warmer seas have also made seafood change with fishes getting smaller and reduced quantity. Really interesting to find out on all these and so the next time when I dig into a don or bento, I will be remembering the hard work of the farmers and how precious food is. We all need a reminder like that. 

Last 4 months of selling Options - USD $6294.76 earned, not sure how long this will last before I get assigned

I have been selling cash secured puts the last 4 months since mid March 2026. So far, it has been profitable as we had a upwards market and so prices have been on an upward trend meaning that the cash secured puts would be safe and usually profit after a few days as prices would go up. Which translates to me being able to close it earlier at a profit and opening a new position. You can definitely see that in May, I close and opened new positions practically every week in May as the market was just hitting new highs but June, it slowed as we saw some weakness in the market. 

However, as we end June 2026 and Micron's earning is coming out later, the market has been experiencing some weakness, due to various reasons, eg Warsh not providing any forward guidance, Banks predicting some rate hikes this year, some profit taking and Korea markets experiencing quite a drawdown as we see individuals taking on leverage and dumping all their money in as their stock market experiences one of the largest growth ever mainly due to Samsung and SK Hynix. 

Depending on how Micron's earnings is, it could dictate the market direction too as some profit taking can be seen and it seems this earnings will help solidify the memory play that has been a base for the AI story. Well, we shall see. 

Here are my profits for the past few months, I sold CSP on various stocks and mostly on those that I don't mind having in my portfolio if assigned. 

I didn't managed to catch onto the explosive memory gains like Micron, Sandisk and other semiconductors but did managed to get some spare change from selling options. For those who bought the names that exploded and held on, congratulations! Even if I had Micron, I think I would have sold it way before it hit $1000 and I would be kicking myself. Anyway, it really takes conviction to hold on and hoping the earnings goes well later. In the meantime, I will continue to sell options and update on my journey. I am currently using about 7% of my portfolio to do these cash secured puts. I don't want this to be more than 10% so I have reinvested some of the earning back. I am mostly buying index ETFs.