The March 11, 2011 triple disasters of tsunami, earthquake and nuclear meltdown have been etched into the Japanese conscious. Many remember the exact moment they heard the news, and for some, these disasters lead to a grappling with values and revisioning of one’s life. For several of the beginning farmers I’ve spoken with, 3.11 was the impetus for them to leave the city and go back to the land. Here, I’ll share a few of their stories.
Kengo Shimizu
Hakui, Ishikawa
Shimizu-san used to live in Tokyo. He was a salaryman, working for a company and bringing home a good income. He had a wife and two kids.
However, when disaster struck in 2011, things he’d never thought about began to surface, and things he’d take for granted suddenly disappeared.
As Tokyo experienced rolling blackouts, Shimizu-san learned for the first time that the energy that fueled his home and his city came from nuclear power plants several prefectures away. And that was just the beginning. He needed diapers for his infant but the store was empty. He couldn’t even buy water. Suddenly, the money that he was earning had no meaning.
Living through this crisis lead Shimizu-san to start to rethink his life, and eventually, with the encouragement of his wife, he and his family left Tokyo for the small city of Hakui to peruse no input farming or natural cultivation.
Securing a position as a member of the national rural development squad program (地域おこし協力隊) brought Shimizu-san to Hakui. This program offers individuals a salary for up to three years. During this period Shimizu-san could work to get his own business off the ground. He found a position working for a conventional rice farmer who allowed him to use his unused plots of land for his own devices. Shimizu-san used this fields to try growing soybeans and a vegetables without the use of agrichemicals or animal byproducts. Meanwhile, his wife started working at a café.
Now in their fourth year in the city, the couple have opened up a takeout restaurant that transforms the farm products Shimizu-san grows into ready-to-go meals. In the addition, the couple sell their food at outdoor events, like the one picture above.
Currently Shimizu-san still spend most of his time working for as a farmhand for the conventional rice farmer, growing rice with pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers on a farm around 10 times the size of the 7000m2 of land he cultivates. Despite the size of his own farm, Shimizu-san still has big dreams for his business and for natural cultivation. As he explains, he hopes that in the near future, he and his wife’s business will become an example of how to use natural cultivation to make a living and raise a family.
Satoshi Nitta
Hakui, Ishikawa
As college student, Nitta-san majored in agricultural economics. However, when it became time to choose a career, he chose a more stable option, becoming an employee at a plate manufacturing company in Tokyo.
He was 42 years old when the triple disasters hit the city. As radiation levels increased, he began to reflect on life choices. Is it really okay for me to continue working at this company? he wondered. At 42, he realized he was about half-way through his life.
Even though it had been 20 years since he’d graduated college, farming was still at the back of his mind. Over the years he’d remained connected to a dairy farmer in Okinawa, visiting and helping out at the farm.
There had been a change in management in his company as well, and the transition had been rough, further making him unsatisfied with his work. Around this time, he heard about a venture that was investing in community farming and beginning farmers. Nitta-san joined the first cohort in the organization’s new organic farming class. Over the next 10 months, Nitta-san spent his weekends emersed in the basics of growing crops, managing pests, and cultivating the soil. Even on his days off he went the library, ravenous to learn anything he could about farming.
At graduation, one of the instructors, told him, “If you are really serious about farming, I will introduce you to someone.” That someone ended up be Johnsen Takano, the city employee at the city of Hakui who was responsible for welcoming natural cultivation into the city.
After several visits to Hakui, Nitta-san made the leap, bringing his wife and two children to the rural city where he’d been promised by a community leader that he could take over the shiitake mushroom farm that some local elders had started in the mountains.
However, things weren’t quite as perfect as they’d seemed before he’d arrived. There was a rift in the group of elders who’d been farming the mushrooms. Ultimately only half the business was passed on to Nitta-san, so he was left scrambling to make ends meet. Moreover, many of those who were against the transition were Nitta-san’s neighbors; he struggled against the ill will that surrounded him in his new home. As he explained, “I can’t bear to look at photos of taken during that time…my family looks so anxious, my kids so pitiful.”
Nonetheless, Nitta-san and his family persevered. Thanks to introductions to other retiring farmers, Nitta-san was able to expand his business. And slowly, his neighbors warmed up to the newcomers. Now, 7 years later, Nitta-san makes a relatively stable income growing rice, lotus roots and mushrooms and has become accepted as a member of the local community.
However, his early troubles have stuck with him and he remains concerned about the future. Nitta-san knows how hard it is for beginning farmers. For him, major expenses are on the horizon with his children entering high school and college. When we spoke, however, Nitta-san was optimistic about the future. He shared his plans and vision of forming a workers cooperative for other sustainable famers like himself: an organization and new brand to help lessen the barriers for entering farming.
He envisions a group that will make it possible for those like himself to live their values and farm without the use of any chemicals. Ultimately, he sees his farm and the organization he’s building as a bridge to a healthier and safer and more people focus era, that will hopefully have learned from the disasters of 3.11.
Yoshide Imamura
Kahokugata Land Reclamation, Ishikawa
“The dots turned into a line. The line into a plane. And the plane into a sphere… and that is how I became a farmer.”
Beginning when he was a teenager around 30 years ago, issues of environment, health, and the global food supply concerned Imamura-san. How it could be that people were getting sick from the material their homes were made from? Was the world going to run out of food?
Sometime after these began to ideas preoccupy him, Imamura-san heard Akinori Kimura, the father of natural cultivation, on the radio. Kimura spoke about the health benefit of eating foods grown without any agrichemicals. This message resonated with Imamura-san, and he began to connect the dots between health, the food supply and the environment.
For a number of years, Imamura-san gardened as a hobby and attend related events, but those lines and planes s didn’t fully transform into a sphere until 3.11. Until the triple disasters, Imamura-san had been working as a salaryman. However, the disaster made him reflect, “I really need to change my life.” Imamura-san left his job and made the commitment to farm full time.
While Imamura-san currently farms in the Kahokugata Land Reclamation, a few miles from where he grew up, his path to his current position was circuitous. His first stint at farming was at a several hours away in the Noto Peninsula, helping take care for the grounds at an old Japanese farmhouse. Then he moved to opposite end of the prefecture, where he borrowed land from a friend.
Around 5 years ago, Imamura-san got a lucky break. He met the head of a company that wanted to give back to the community through farming. First as a contractor than, then as a full-time employee, Imamura-san was hired to explore the potential for natural farming for the company.
Currently Imamura-san grows an array of different vegetables as well as blueberries. As he explains, during the first few years of farming, farmers using natural cultivation don’t know what crops suit the soil so must grow a wide variety to learn what works best. He is still in this exploratory phase.
Looking forward, Imamura-san hopes that his farm can make a bigger impact. He told me about how he and the company have plans to build a food processing facility neighboring his farm. Because vegetables spoil quickly, he hopes that through food processing he can help extend the life of not only the produce that he grows, but those of neighboring farms. He sees this addition as a critical step in preventing food from being waste. Through this project, Imamura-san will be fully addressing the intersecting issues of health, environment and food supply that first caught his attention 30 years ago.