Tōhoku region
Tōhoku was traditionally considered the granary of Japan because it supplied Sendai and the Tokyo-Yokohama market with rice and other farming commodities. Tōhoku provided 20 percent of the nation's rice crop. The climate, however, is harsher than in other parts of Honshū due to the stronger effect of the Siberian High, and permits only one crop a year on paddy fields.
Rice production in Japan
However, the land is intensively cultivated. Paddy fields occupy much of the countryside, whether on the alluvial plains, the terraced slopes, or the swampland and coastal bays. Nonrice farmland share the terraces and lower slopes and are planted with wheat and barley in the autumn and with sweet potatoes, vegetables, and dry rice in the summer. Japan's strategy to protect the flooding of its rice market is to offer compensation to those who own land and agree to grow other commodities. Intercropping is common: such crops are alternated with beans and peas.