The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs announced on Thursday that the nation’s food self-sufficiency rate was tentatively estimated to stand at 50-point-two percent last year, up half a percentage point from a year ago.
 
The food self-sufficiency rate is estimated by dividing domestic production by domestic food consumption excluding consumption of feedstuff.
 
The rate has been continuously rising since 2011.
 
The ministry said the rate went up after food consumption shrank while production remained at levels similar to previous years amid improved rice productivity and expanded cultivation of wheat and barley.
 
The self-sufficiency rate of rice grew from 95-point-four percent to 101 percent and of wheat from one-point-one to one-point-two percent.
 
The self-sufficiency rate of grains, which includes consumption of feedstuff, dipped two-tenths of a percentage point to 23-point-eight percent last year.