Japanese market for oranges

Why are Japan's imports of U.S. fresh oranges less than what they used to be? It has something to do with the fact that young consumers eater fewer oranges than their older cohorts, while older Japanese tend to eat more oranges as they age. Those trends would tend to counteract each other. so...... Find an ERS report on the Japanese market for oranges here. From the report:

Japan has undergone a profound demographic shift in recent decades. Birth rates have fallen, life expectancy has risen, and as a result, Japan’s population profile has aged. The birth rate slowed steadily in the 1990s and early 2000s, until the population began to decline in 2005, a phenomenon that is expected to continue. Japan’s 20th century history involved great upheavals and shocks, including urbanization, war, economic depressions, and booms. Generations, or cohorts, of Japanese people born in different decades have had quite
different life experiences, and this may affect food consumption patterns. Studies suggest that fresh fruit consumption rises as individuals age.3 This means that older people will eat more fresh fruit than younger people. In Japan, the population has aged significantly—while the general population is decreasing, the number of people over 60 is increasing—and this might
lead to greater consumption of fresh fruits, like oranges. Another demographic change is the increase in women’s participation in the urban workforce in Japan. This has put pressure on at-home food preparation, which was traditionally done by women. In the case of oranges, this could mean that wives and mothers are less likely to peel oranges (and other fruits) for husbands and children. Women in younger cohorts are more likely to work outside the home than women in older cohorts. Food consumption in Japan has changed a great deal in the last century. Income and import growth have allowed the Japanese to purchase a wider variety of foods, including some that would otherwise have been unavailable or too expensive in the past. Increased access to imports and greater productivity in the domestic food chain have led to lower prices for some foods. Income and price changes can explain some of the broad shifts in Japanese consumption over the 20th century. However, the relatively small shifts in income and prices over the last 15 years do not seem highly important for continuing shifts in food consumption in Japan. Demographic effects may explain changes that economic effects do not. Using FIES data, research has assessed changes in Japanese food consumption over time and across a spectrum of age cohorts, finding that fresh fruit consumption has been highest in cohorts born in earlier decades, and lowest in those born most recently. Also, fresh fruit consumption increases with the age of an individual (Mori et al., 2006). Recent research confirmed the same findings for oranges. As in the case of fresh fruits, the research found that (1) orange consumption is higher, the earlier the person was born (i.e., higher in older cohorts, lower in younger cohorts); and (2) that orange consumption increases as an individual ages,
no matter when the person was born, although not at the same rate. In both cases, the effects are progressive and continuous, in general. Each cohort eats fewer oranges than the cohort immediately older than it, and orange consumption increases progressively with the age of an individual. Older cohorts die out, and are replaced by younger cohorts. Since the older
cohorts in Japan (e.g., cohorts born in the 1930s and 1940s) eat more oranges than younger cohorts, as these older cohorts die out, average orange consumption drops. On the other hand, Japan has been rapidly aging, and orange consumption increases with age. The orange consumption of a typical person born in the 1960s, for instance, is higher now than it was 20
years ago. This effect tends to increase average orange consumption. These two effects—cohort membership and aging—have opposite impacts on orange consumption and tend to offset each other. Thus, the gradual decline in orange consumption to date is not demographically straightforward. Cohort transition (the mortality of cohorts that ate more fruit at any age) in the next decades may have a negative effect on future orange (and fresh fruit) consumption.