Food self-sufficiency means that a country produces enough food to feed all of its people without having to import food from other countries. Japan was self-sufficient in rice before the war, in part because of it colonies, but by the end of the war food was in short supply and Japan was not producing enough to feed its population. After the economy had recovered during the 1950s and boomed in the 1960s, Japan achieved self-sufficiency in overall food production in the 1970s. At the same time, the changing diet led to increased imports of some food products that were now in greater demand. By the mid-1980s, Japan abandoned the goal of food self-sufficiency. Other countries could produce these goods more cheaply, and Japan could import them at less cost than it could produce them. Since the 1980s the overall trend has been toward decreasing food self-sufficiency. Click on CHARTS, below, to see how self-sufficient Japan is in various foods.