Although the 2011 Fukushima disaster had a catastrophic effect on farming in the prefecture, it can be seen as just the latest in a long run of setbacks the country has suffered on the food security front. Reforms instituted in the aftermath of World War II drastically improved self-sufficiency, but in the ensuing decades farmers abandoned agriculture in droves.
In 1965, 73 percent of the calories consumed in Japan were being produced there, compared with only 39 percent by 2010. During that same period, the area of land being cultivated had shrunk from 15 million to 11 million acres. The average age of a Japanese farmer climbed from 59 to 66 between 1995 and 2011. And the sudden displacement of 110,000 Fukushima residents effectively retired many other growers several years before they were ready.
City Farm Odaiba, which sits atop a high-rise overlooking Tokyo Bay, on the manmade island of Odaiba, represents one of many initiatives aimed at reversing the farm-sector decline. Established in 2012 by real-estate behemoth Mitsui Fudosan as a kind of refuge for elderly farmers who had fled Tohoku after the tsunami, the community farm quickly became something more than a place for the displaced people to dirty their trowels. “The old farmers get to pass on their skills to a younger generation of people in the city,” says Taro Ebara, a Tokyo University of Agriculture graduate employed by Odaiba to oversee the farm. “And anyone who helps with the cultivation gets to take food home.”
The corporation reserves some of the plots for growing its own produce, which it sells at a local farmers market, but most of the rooftop space is the domain of the farmers, who offer free classes on topics like transforming rice into sake.
Across the bay, Tokyo’s largest urban farm stands nine stories high, covering 215,000 square feet. The Pasona Group, Japan’s second-biggest staffing company, renovated the 50-year-old building in 2010 and began paying specialists to school its desk-bound employees in farming techniques. “One of the industries we serve is agricultural,” says Ryo Nakamura, a Pasona employee.
Another company is making a difference right where the disasters hit. Fujitsu, a tech firm with a large plant in Fukushima, used governmental subsidies intended to reverse the prefecture’s fortunes as an opportunity to pivot, diverting resources from its slowing microchip operation to a new hydroponic farming venture. Now, 30 employees who once worked on the microchip assembly line don the same lab coats and face masks to tend greens targeted to the country’s aging population. (The lettuce’s reduced levels of potassium render it easier for ailing kidneys to digest.) Sold in grocery stores throughout Japan, the lettuce is the first in a series of “clean vegetables” Fujitsu plans to market nationally.
The country’s new crop of high-tech growing establishments should place Japanese farmers in a position to better face what may prove the agri-cultural sector’s biggest challenge yet. In February, the government signed a free-trade pact with the United States and several other nations. Assuming it gets through U.S. Congress later this year, the TPP will open up opportunities to export more goods, a shift that could result in significant revenues. But the arrangement will also mean increased competition. Urban farms and subsidized lettuce projects are all well and good, but are they enough to save a dying—and crucial—industry?
Source: modernfarmer.com