Abstract
The Tokai Coop, a consumer's cooperative group covering three Prefectures of Aichi, Gifu and Mie, have been giving much importance to the supply of local rice produced in the area. However, the disturbance so-called "Heisei Rice Trouble" brought much confusion to the Cooperative's rice business and by the autumn of 1995 the amount of the rice supply did not reach to that of 1992 yet. The main reason of the delay of the supply recovery is the weakness of the business constitution of the Cooperative which has relied on the New Food Act "system". The Tokai Coop is making effort for the reconstruction of the rice business under the New Food Act. At the moment the Coop is attaching importance to the prices and widening the rice brand items, in order to respond to the market competition brought about from the rice deregulation. But this policy is contradictory to the policy of the precedence of rice produced in the area. I am convinced that the most important thing is to make the most of attempts experimented by now and to develop the policy of attaching importance to the locally produced rice.
