Miyazaki Farming Diary 01: Nobu's Family Welcomes Their First Foreigner
Hello, everyone. I believe some of you are already familiar with "Taiwan Juku" and the "Miyazaki Prefectural Government" of Japan. Since founding Taiwan Juku two years ago, Ms. Yumi Takamine has been interacting and communicating closely with friends in Taiwan, and they have visited many rural villages in Taiwan, made many warm-hearted farmer friends, and hope to engage in equal exchange and learning with Taiwan and grow together.
After I decided to go to Japan to observe agriculture, Miyazaki Prefecture became my first rural foothold by a twist of fate. Although we have always felt that Japan is the country whose agricultural situation is closest to Taiwan's, and the Taiwanese government often treats Japan's agricultural policy as a model, in fact Taiwan is extremely lacking in first-hand information about Japan's production sites, yet is often drowned in admiration for Japan's agricultural success stories.
I believe that the best and most ideal way to understand Japanese agriculture is to labor together and live together with farmers. Only then do you have the chance to quickly get familiar with the various production and organizational realities on the front lines of Japanese agriculture. Once the basic picture gradually becomes clear, and then combined with their policies and how local organizations operate, you can gain a deep understanding of Japan's advantages and disadvantages relative to Taiwan's agriculture, and of the joy and helplessness of ordinary farmers.
With a more comprehensive understanding, we can engage in more concrete, equal exchange and consultation with Japan, and take practical action to adjust the various details of Taiwan's agriculture, so that the relationship between us does not remain at the level of mere envy and mythologizing. I hope this record can become nourishment for Taiwan's agriculture, and provide more basic reference material for future exchange and learning with Japanese agriculture.
Since I arrived here in early September, Ms. Yumi Takamine and my friends in Miyazaki have welcomed me very kindly, and selflessly shared and introduced agriculture-related information with me. The mandarin orange orchards here are in the middle of the busy farming season, and I have had the chance to throw myself into a farming household as a member of the labor force, observe the production and marketing and production process of the crops, and learn to feel the culture and life of traditional Japanese farming families.
On the other hand, Ms. Takamine also introduced me to many people from the Miyazaki Prefectural Government and agricultural organizations, allowing me to gain a deeper and more complete understanding of Miyazaki's local agriculture-related policies such as the sixth industrialization. Of course, Miyazaki also has many people outside government who want to take Miyazaki and agriculture to a better place.
Therefore, my Miyazaki series of articles is roughly divided into three themes: first, farm fieldwork diaries; second, introductions to Japan's agriculture-related policies; third, the unfinished stories of Taiwan Juku members. Having just arrived in Miyazaki not long ago, what I understand is still very limited. But I hope I can become everyone's eyes, so that all of you in Taiwan can feel and learn, in sync with me, about what is special and pragmatic about Miyazaki.
[Miyazaki Farming Diary] 01 The First Foreigner in Nobu's Family
On the evening of September 4, Tanaka Nobuyoshi (hereafter Nobu) drove me to his family home in Nichinan City, more than an hour from downtown Miyazaki, to have dinner with his parents and prepare for the start of the harvest on September 5.
This year is the first year Nobu has tried to use his own personal network to find harvest helpers for his family's mandarin orange orchard, Kotobuki En. In the past, during the busy farming season from September to December, the orchard was managed by his parents when it came to finding workers. Although the family all knew that the orchard would have an enormous demand for labor during this period, his parents may have subconsciously wanted to avoid this big problem, and often only started looking for people when the date was very close.
These workers were not fixed from year to year, and were found through his parents' network among people in Miyazaki who needed work. As a result, some of them might not be good at communicating with others, and some might not be able to cooperate with the various harvest requirements of the farm, which made Nobu's parents see finding workers as a chore. This year his parents only asked Nobu to help find harvest helpers in August, which really gave him a headache, especially since this year is also a big harvest year, and the orange saplings planted three years ago can also be harvested, making the labor pressure greater than ever.
But at the same time, Nobu also wanted to use this mandarin orange harvest as an opportunity to let his parents meet different people, and perhaps, slowly, the conservative mindset of traditional Japanese farming families would begin to change somewhat. This is Nobu's process of empowering himself, and also a process of empowering his parents. As Nobu's friend, I am very lucky to be able to take part in and witness this process of change. Come to think of it, maybe it was fate. Just as I was about to set off for Japan, I learned through a series of connections that Kotobuki En needed helpers, and through another series of connections became the first foreigner to live with their family.
