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Japan's Local Production for Local Consumption and Food and Agriculture Education (Part 2): Protect the Fields Well, and the Fields Will Protect People Too

General News By Emily Carter 0 views

Editor's note:

The second lecture in the "Smallholder Farming and Sustainable Taiwan, China Lecture Series" invited Hu Zhongyi, who once studied in Japan and currently serves as Deputy Director of the Irrigation and Water Conservancy Division of the Council of Agriculture, to share Japan's experience with local production for local consumption and food and agriculture education.

This article continues from the previous installment (see here). The previous installment introduced the first successful case of smallholder farmer revival in Japan: Irodori. Irodori is located in a remote area and has 198 home economics class members with an average age of seventy, who collect more than 200 kinds of leaves and flowers every day to supply the "tsumamono" used by Japanese restaurants. Tsumamono are items such as leaves and flowers used as decorations in Japanese cuisine. (For other articles in this series, please see the links at the end.)

The third lecture in this series will be held this Friday evening (5/18), inviting Professor Jan Chang-Chuan of National Taiwan University to speak about the public health risks of lean meat from beef cattle fed with ractopamine. Let us continue to follow the issue of American beef and monitor the government! For related information, please see here.

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Japan's Second Smallholder Success Case:A Direct Sales Outlet in Aichi Prefecture

In the mid-1980s, the farmers' market "JA Himawari Green Center" in Toyokawa City, Aichi Prefecture, was hit by imported agricultural products, and farm women had to go out to work to supplement household income. No one in the women's division (home economics class) wanted to serve as a board member, and it fell into a crisis of "disbandment." Therefore, 50 members of the women's division jointly planned a strategy for revival, displaying agricultural products grown by their own households in a 2-pyeong prefabricated temporary hut that had never been used for sales, and began an unattended sales operation (outside villages in rural Japan there are direct sales outlets, a kind of unattended sales point where farm households place their products, with clear price tags, and customers put in money themselves and take bags to pack and carry away their purchases; this is the most primitive form, and it still exists in Japan today.)

Starting from selling vegetables in a 2-pyeong hut, they brought products here to display. At first it was unattended sales, and ten years later there were five stores, with dedicated staff providing explanations, and more than two thousand suppliers. At the beginning there was no one to explain, and no one bought, so they asked family members to go explain, taking shifts as store clerks, and they also discovered that in the countryside a person's reputation affects sales. Over ten years, turnover went from 0 to 2 billion yen, and the number of stores increased to 5. These achievements came mostly from the efforts of women and the elderly. Originally they planted and sent products to wholesalers for sale in big cities, but then discovered that local purchasing power was already very large, so why waste so much energy, manpower, and money. Some agricultural products that did not look good in the farmers' market, they found, could also be sold; products that had originally been eliminated could also bring in money.

Further Reading

Other Articles in the Series

Lecture Information

Public Health Risks of Ractopamine-Fed American Beef
Speaker: Professor Jan Chang-Chuan of National Taiwan University
Time: May 18 (Friday) 7:00-9:00 pm
Venue: First-floor meeting room, Jingmei Junior High School (Wenshan Community College)

Information on Subsequent Sessions

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