Japan’s Agriculture Inaccurately Portrayed by Media

   Agriculture has become something of a boom in Japan. Gals of the streets of Shibuya, Tokyo, on Oct. 10, 2009, showed up en masse in a paddy field of Ogata Village, Akita Prefecture. The unlikely farmers were there to harvest the rice which they have planted back in May 2009 on a project sponsored by Shiho Fujita, a model-turned businesswoman known for making a business of being a gal.

  Shiho Fujita
  Born in 1985. Was a fashion model, but founded her own marketing company targeting young, hip girls at age of 19. After stepping as its CEO in 2008, established her personal office, Office G-Revo. Currently working on “No-Gal Project (Paddy gal) ” for the young to think about the state of food.


Gals in the Paddy Field
   One of the paddy gals, Maya Nakano, also a model, when asked about her future as a farmer, replied, “I doubt it. I was just invited to be here by a friend of mine.” She, however, added that she might do it again.

  Maya Nakano took part in No-gal project and said that the rice reaped by herself is specially delicious.

  Agriculture has become a favorite subject for the media, acquiring a fixed weekly feature status in the daily Asahi newspaper and enjoying cover story treatments by many magazines such as the BRUTUS, the Weekly-Diamond and the Weekly Toyokeizai. Behind the suddenly booming, agriculture has two major factors-economic recession and damaged food security.
  As the Waseda Guardian looked in whether the new agriculture boom would result in an increase in the number of new farmers, it discovered that sources associated with agriculture were all feeling a gap between so many media reports and the reality.
  Ogata village where Shibuya gals did a semblance of farming is a patch of land reclaimed in Hachirogata Lagoon in 1964 and has traditionally welcomed newcomers. Fujita who sent about 20 gals to the farmland said, “I started this campaign to get gals involved in agriculture because I wanted people to care more about foods.”
  So, she posted an invitation to farming on her blog (http://ameblo.jp/fujitashiho). As the gals who responded to the web post huddled around a paddy field, an even larger number of reporters-hometown Akita TV crew, Chunichi Shimbun’s student reporters, and a Shogakukan magazine writer, to name a few-surrounded them.
  BRUTUS EDITOR Tadahiro Sugie explained the lifestyle magazine’s feature on agriculture, the first of its kind in its history, in the February 2009 issue, saying, “It’s not that we did agriculture because it’s booming. It’s rather because more people, such as EDITORial staff and myself, are doing Sunday farming, going out to do rice planting, for example. We have been hearing about them. And, one day, it just dawned on us that doing an agriculture feature could be interesting. To our surprise, after the BRUTUS did a feature on agriculture, many other media followed suit.”
  Business magazine “Weekly Diamond” also featured agriculture in the February 2009 issue. Asked why a business magazine featured agriculture, deputy Editor-in-Chief Ryo Otsubo said, “To tell you the truth, our original intention was doing a story on the government’s agriculture policy. But, readers won’t bite at it. So, we turned it around and made it into a feature about how salaried men can change to farmers, interviewing people having quit white-collar jobs to do farming as well as newly born farming corporations”

  BRUTUS
  First published in 1980 from Magazine House, Ltd. Published twice a mouth. Was one of the first male-oriented magazines.
C) マガジンハウスBRUTUS 656号


  Weekly-Diamond
  First published in 1913 from Diamond, Inc. Economic magazine targeting office workers.
C)株式会社ダイアモンド社　週刊ダイヤモンド通巻4289号


Fantasized Farming
  Agriculture distribution consultant Kenji Yamamoto is critical of recent media reports on agriculture. There are three types of agriculture reports, according to Yamamoto, who started “Yaofuji,” an extracurricular group focusing on farming, while he was a student of Keio University, and currently advises corporations planning to enter agriculture businesses.

  Kenji Yamamoto
  Born in 1971. Founded a student organization called “Yaofuji” in college where he created fields near the campus and grew over 80 produces in his undergraduate and graduate years. Consultant for newcomers to agriculture.

   One is seen everywhere on TV waves, with show biz performers and young girls having a taste of agriculture, such as “Dash Village,” a fictitious village where show biz performers do agriculture. Yamamoto declared that nothing good will come out of such media projects.
   The second type, Yamamoto said, is a recent trend for having a variety of people discuss the prospect of new agriculture businesses. Frankly, he said, the so-called new agriculture businesses were being discussed by people who have nothing to do with agriculture.
   “There is no way of knowing what they say is right or wrong,” he said, “by the time we find that out, five or 10 years from now, they will be long gone.”
   The third was said to be an opposition against agriculture protection. He said the public opinion has been in favor of protection in recent years because of food safety, security and self-sufficiency.
   But, he noted that there is a backlash against agriculture protection, citing a recently published book attacking what it called “sham food crisis” and a university professor accusing “farmers cheating on farmland subsidies.”


Easier Said Than Done
  Prof. Toshiyuki Monma, who teaches future bio-business entrepreneurs at the Tokyo University of Agriculture, said he was concerned about media reports spotlighting a small group of people who succeeded in agriculture.

  Toshiyuki Monnma
  Born in 1949. Graduated from Tokyo University of Agriculture, worked at Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries since 1972. Since 1999, has taught at his alma master.

  “I want the media to tell us the truth that agriculture is certainly not a rose garden and that from a business point of view there aren’t so many business chances in agriculture.” “Agriculture is not as easy and profitable as some media claim,” he said.
  The university professor noted that agriculture is a job in need of multiple capabilities-cultivating crops, marketing and management, and communication with other farmers and buyers.
  Freelance journalist Hiroko Aoyama, who has spent the last 10 years researching on Japanese agriculture, said, “There is a big gap between what farmers really are and what is reported about them.” “Before the agriculture boom,” she said, “it was often reported that life was tough for farmers who were all very poor.”

  Hiroko Aoyama
  Born in 1963. Spent half a year in a farming village as free journalist. Published “Tsuyoi Nougyou wo Tsukuru (Strong Agriculture Is Made)” in June 2009.

   If one took a closer look, however, it must be apparent that farmers were professionals working real hard. There was no such misery in agriculture as portrayed by the media, he said.
   TVs tend to filter whatever they may report, Aoyama said. Take a farming family with a farming income of 500,000 yen a year, for example. TV would show an old farmer lamenting that it was a cold summer and the crops were poor. Only if the TV camera panned, viewers might have seen a nice-looking house with three cars. The head of the family turned out to be a civil servant making a handsome salary, he said.
   Prof. Yoshihisa Goudo, a doctor of agriculture teaching economic policy at the Meiji Gakuin University, also criticized the current agriculture boom, saying, “The agriculture boom is getting worse. The media lose no time in reporting any new corporate entry into farming portraying agriculture as if it were a dream world.” “Ask any people on the street if they think agriculture is a growth industry,” he said, “a half of them will answer ‘yes’.”
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  Yoshihisa Goudo
  Born in 1962. A doctor of agriculture teaching economic policy at the Meiji Gakuin University and wrote “Gisou Nouka (Camouflage Farm Family)” in August 2009.
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Japan as Farm Superpower
  Yoshihiro Asakawa, deputy Editor-in-Chief of the “Nogyo Keieisha (Farmers’ Business)” magazine, objects so many reports about the “3K” of agriculture-“kusai (stinking)”, “kitanai (dirty)” and “kitsui (tough)”-as well as the aging of farming population and a lack of successors.
  “Japan is an agricultural superpower,” Asakawa said, comparing 8 trillion yen in Japan’s agricultural production with 4 trillion yen in Germany, 3 trillion yen each in Australia and Britain and 2.5 trillion yen in Russia. “Japan’s agricultural production ranks second in the advanced economies,” the magazine EDITOR said. “Japan’s agriculture is just as good as its GDP,” he added.
  “Talk about the aging of the agriculture population,” Asakawa went on, “it’s taking place everywhere. But, don’t forget that Japan has the largest agriculture population among the advanced economies, outnumbering the U.S., Germany and England.” He said it was only natural that the farming population of a country decreases when the level of its science and technology improves, increasing the per capita production level in agriculture.
  “I have to tell you that the pressing problem with China and Vietnam is how to cut back on farming population,” he said. He also pointed out that despite its large size, the Japanese market for foods is overflowing with homegrown crops in a   sharp contrast with the U.S. and Britain filled with imports.
   Asakawa said it is politics which hides the truth about Japan’s agriculture from the eyes of urban dwellers who know very little about what is going on in the countryside. “There may be a small number of full-time farming households but there are a large number of households doing agriculture as a side job,” he said.
  Politicians give subsidies to them because they are a big voting base, he said, adding, “Farmers have to look poor otherwise politicians, government and Agricultural Cooperatives would look bad.”
   Media reports portraying farmers as the weak also result from the government efforts to promote modern agriculture, according to Prof. Takeshi Hara, who teaches agriculture in connection with the environment at Waseda University.
   As the Japanese government put the Basic Law of Agriculture in effect in 1961 pushing for a switch from the traditional manual agriculture to the modern agriculture with motored machines and agricultural chemicals, Hara said, the government wanted to portray the old farming as tough and something to turn away from. “It’s been half a century since then,” Hara said, “it would be idleness if the media continued to depict the main part of Japan’s agriculture with sweat and old farmers bent with age.”

  Takeshi Hara
Born in 1938. Been a city news reporter of Mainichi Newspaper for more than 30 years. He works to promote projects involving both environment and agriculture, and wrote “Nihon No Nougyou (Japanese Agriculture)” in 1994.


Media Pay Little Attention
   Kenji Yamamoto, food consultant and president of Good Tables Co., Ltd., pointed to the poor quality of reporting on agriculture. He said when agriculture was Japan’s key industry, newspapers assigned veteran reporters familiar with agriculture.
   As agriculture became less of an important industry in recent history, newspapers such as the Nihon Keizai Shimbun have made major cuts on the agriculture section, assigning those without much experience in agriculture.
   “Agriculture is not an easy subject to cover. Take the relationship among the Agricultural Cooperatives, farmers and the wholesale markets, for example. It’s not something you can easily get hold of. I’ve been in this business for more than 10 years, but I still have difficulties understanding it,” he said.
  

Armchair Farmers
   Yoshihiro Asakawa, executive director of Agricultural Communications Co., Ltd., the publisher of the Farmers’ Business magazine, in July 2009 published the “Agrizm,” a magazine for young farmers and new farmers. He said, “This is the third time after the war that agriculture is booming.”

  Agrizm
First Published in 2009 from Agricultural Communications Co,. Ltd. Marketed towards the young who wish to go into agriculture.
C)農業技術通信社 Agrizm No.1

  The first boom came in the high economic growth era, following the introduction of the first tiller by Honda Motor Co., Ltd. in 1959. The second boom came in the wake of the collapse of the economic bubble as manufacturing companies such as Omron Corp. and Uniqlo Co., Ltd. began agriculture business in the early 2000’s.
   The companies failed and withdrew from agriculture immediately afterward despite the fact that they were well positioned in their own fields. Asakawa said the companies must have taken agriculture too lightly. Kagome Co., Ltd. and Calbee Foods Co., Ltd., manufacturing companies which survived the agriculture boom, entered agriculture to get materials for their food products, tomato and other juice with Kagome and potato chips with Calbee.
   The third boom, the ongoing one, was described by Asakawa as something akin to an armchair farmer, one who reads books about agriculture instead of working fields. Just like only 1% of fashion magazine readers buys new fashions, he said, agriculture book readers don’t do farming.
   The only contribution the third boom has made to agriculture was said to be the establishment of agriculture as a major category in publishing. But, he said, “Of every 100,000 readers of agriculture books, only one would actually start an agriculture business.”

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DATA
  Graph A represents that the number of the number of independent farmers coming from farming family is getting decrease. On the other hand, Graph B represents the number of people join agricultural production is increasing. Especially the ratio of those who not comes from farming people to employed newcomers to agriculture is increasing. In fact, in the fair for newcomers to agriculture in Osaka, July 4th 2009, many newcomers came and heard to farmers talked about agriculture.

  The fair for newcomers to agriculture was held in Osaka, July 4th 2009. -Ryo Otsubo



Jobless Turn to Agriculture
  Weekly Diamond deputy Editor-in-Chief Otsubo said economic recession and anxiety about food safety are the two major factors behind the agriculture boom. “For one thing, people looked at agriculture as a way out of the fears of unemployment,” Otsubo said.
  Japan’s employment situation got worse after the Lehman shock of 2008, leaving many unemployed. Up until then, agriculture had never been considered as an important means of solving unemployment.
   However, agriculture fair organizers began to report an increase in the number of inquiries from those wanting to work in agriculture. Otsubo said there was an increase in the social need for agriculture as a means of employment.
Incidentally, the agriculture side was under the pressure of the aging of population and was in need of young workers, striking a good balance between demand and supply.
   The second reason, the concern about the security of foods, stemmed in part from sharp rises in food prices as a result of the rapid development of less advanced countries which began to import foods in large quantities. People began to pay attention to Japan’s self-sufficiency.
   On top of that, there were cases of harmful food imports, casting doubt on the previous thinking in favor of cheaper foods. A general agreement began to form among the Japanese that foods consumed locally should be produced locally. Otsubo said his magazine ran a cover story on foods in 2008, which sold very well.
   Agriculture journalist Aoyama was skeptical about the newfound love affairs with agriculture. “It’s just that other industries were exhausted by the economic recession, making agriculture look better in comparison,” she said, adding, “the boom will be gone as soon as other industries come alive again.”
  

Aspirants Don’t Last Long
  Aoyama, who spends half a year in agricultural villages, said the new supply-demand relationship between those laid off by companies and farmers in need of successors ended in failure for most part.
   Aoyama quoted a farmer as saying that he accepted many laid-off temporary workers because human resources were previously hard to come by. As it turned out, however, many of them did not even have the basic communication capabilities and, therefore, failed to stay very long.
  Since the agriculture side does not want to repeat the same mistake again, prefectural governments which first receive applicants make a point of asking them what kind of agriculture they are looking for. The most common replies are either “lead self-sufficient lifestyle” or “support family”. Self-sufficiency folks are basically turned down.
  As prefectural officers interview applicants and their family members, they make sure that wives are willing to cooperate with their spouses. “As a result,” Aoyama said, “the rate of new farmers staying long became very high.” “They are the ones who want to support their families with agriculture and look at agriculture from a management point of view,” she said.

Efficient Farming Sought
  Hideki Shimazaki, president of Topriver Co., Ltd., a successful agricultural enterprise set up in 2000, selling 1 billion yen a year, also said he would turn down an increasing number of job applicants citing unemployment or self-sufficient lifestyle as the reason for their application.

  Hideki Shimazaki
Born in 1959. Was a useful salesman but quit to found the agricultural production company, Topriver. Co., Ltd. in 2000.

  Shimazaki said agriculture is not as easy as they think. “So, I tell them that they will need to work 15 hours a day, taking off only two days per month,” he said, “as a result, as many as 60 to 70% of them give up right there.”

  Ken Matsuda
works at Topriver Co., Ltd “I moved to here from another agricultural corporation eight years ago because I wanted to sell lettuce I cultivated at higher price with great efficiency.”


Tough International Competition
   So, what agriculture is really like in Japan? Waseda’s Hara said there are two major undercurrents driving agriculture in Japan. “From the beginning of 1980’s when Japanese agriculture was incorporated into the world economy, there was a growing consciousness that Japan will not be able to survive international competition by just producing foods as it was,” he said.
   Hara said one of the undercurrents was the scaling-up of agricultural production for an improved efficiency. The other is the amalgamation of the agricultural policy and the environmental policy, one which treats the byproducts of agriculture-the environment as well as culture-as the public assets and spends tax money on them.
  

Successful Farm Business
   Ganari Takahashi, who runs a farm and restaurants, extending his business from production to marketing, disagrees with Shimazaki, saying, “Mr. Shimazaki’s efficient agriculture should be a good one in a protected market. In the free trade era, however, he won’t be able to compete against agriculture even more efficient than his. The only way for us to beat the global competition is produce luxury foods.”
  
  Ganari Takahashi
   Born in 1958. Succeeded as the president of the multi-selling pornographic company. In 2006, he retired suddenly and invested a billion of his own money to found Kunitachi Farm Co. that works on food’s production to distribution.

   “Look around the world,” he said, “some countries are cut out for agriculture. While one country has a patch of farmland ten times as big as the Kanto Plain, others, such as Ukraine, have rich black soil.” On the contrary, most of farmlands in Japan are the “intermediate and mountainous areas,” as stipulated by agriculture laws, which are not suitable to pursue efficient farming but are suitable to make luxury foods, Takahashi said.
   Takahashi’s farm, Kunitachi Farm Co. set up in 2006, was said to be focusing on pricy, quality foods. “I hate to say this but you will have to be rich to be able to buy locally produced, value-added foods,” he said. He said he pays visits to the farm to make sure everything is done properly.
   “Oh, we really care about fine details,” he said. “Ours are very original. Only if we can communicate with consumers that our vegetables are different, I think we can sell them for a price twice or even three times as much as others,” he said.


Farms Keep Environment
   Despite their differences, Shimazaki and Takahashi agree on one thing: inefficient, minute-scale farmers ought to give up. However, Prof. Hara does not think so. “Mr. Shimazaki’s is one of a very small number of top-class, highly intensive agriculture firms,” he said, adding, “the problem is those top firms cannot even supply a third of food needs in Japan. It’s small-scale farmers who support Japanese agriculture.”
   Agriculture journalist Aoyama said, “If we could make a business of such things as the rural environment upheld by small farmers, old and grand farmhouses and the traditional food culture handed down over many centuries, then people living there would be able to make a living.”
   “For those of us living in big cities, local cuisine and grand farmhouses are very refreshing to see,” Aoyama said. The exchange like that between urban and rural areas was said to be “green tourism.” “People in the farmland are looking for someone who can bridge the two areas,” Aoyama said.
   Daisuke Nakagawa, an official of the Agricultural Cooperative Aoba in Nerima, Tokyo, agreed with Aoyama, saying, “Farmers in Tokyo feel they are not really selling agricultural products. They are selling agriculture.”
Nakagawa said farmers in Tokyo have only a small patch of farmland, income from which is hardly sufficient to support their families. Although they get a fair amount of income from real estate they own, they are still farmers and want to get more income from farmland they own.
   Nakagawa said some of them have made their farmland open to city people for hands-on harming experiences in cooperation with the local government and the Aoba chapter of the Japan Agricultural Cooperatives (JA). On occasions, they held firework and barbeque events, forming a sort of community around them.
   JA Aoba entered for the Agriculture Award, sponsored by the Nippon Hoso Kyokai (quasi-government broadcasting network) and the JA, listing a number of community events it is holding. JA Aoba won the grand pix, Nakagawa said.
   Toshiko Mimura, a 30-year-long farmer in Ogata, Akita, opened “Sakura,” an agritourism-style inn, three years ago taking her cue from a trip to Germany. “I learned in Germany,” she said, “farmers there have two pillars of income-dairy farm and green tourism.”
   She said since farmers in Japan too live in a large house capable of accommodating three generations, there are always extra rooms to spare for guests. Besides, she added, there are paddy fields nearby where guests can enjoy hands-on farming experience.
“So, I thought maybe I can do it,” Mimura said, adding, however, that the first guests to her inn were fishing enthusiasts despite her original thinking.
   “People enjoying hands-on experience in the paddy fields are increasing,” Mimura said, “but so far I’m the only one in Ogata doing green tourism. I hope more people will do the same.”

  
  Agritourism-style inn “Sakura-Inn”
  Opened in 2006. The only afritourism inn in Ogata, Akita. Guests can experience hands-on harming. (HP: http://member.ogata.or.jp/~a~mimura/ ※English OK)



Underpriced Foods
   Good Tables Co. president Kenji Yamamoto said the problem with agriculture of Japan essentially boils down to the fact that foods are underpriced. The author of book “The Underpriced Foods of Japan” published in 2008, Yamamoto said, “It’s not that the problem is agriculture. The problem is the deterioration of surroundings which is, in a word, underpriced foods.”
   Yamamoto said something is wrong with the pricing of foods currently dictated by supermarkets and restaurant chains. “They just tell farmers prices to sell. Otherwise, there will be no deal. As a result, a block of tofu has always been priced at 98 yen, a pack of eggs 100 yen. The bad weather just doesn’t matter.”
   Yamamoto said nobody wants to succeed farming because underpriced foods make agriculture unprofitable. There are many part-time farming households because farming income is not good enough, he said. “I’m sure there are many part-time farmers who will quit city jobs only if they can live off the land,” he said.
  

Farm Subsidies Requested
   Yamamoto concluded that the only way to increase food prices is subsidize farmers. “I know that some say farmers are greedy, always being subsidized,” he said, “but nobody complains in the EU where farmers are subsidized. There is a consensus among the people of EU that since farmers not only produce foods but also contribute to the security of land by doing agriculture, they ought to be paid for it.”
   He said there is no consensus in Japan that agriculture contributes to the environment, adding that he does not see much of popular will in favor of agriculture’s role in the environment. Without it, he said, so much media reports about wonderful agriculture does not mean anything.
  
  At Ogata village, Akita Prefecture October 10th, 2009

BY...
Atsunori Kanou
Aya Sakaguchi
Keiji Mano
Kouhei Takahashii
Mei Kimura
Shiho Shoji
Shinya Nakai
Takeaki Hosokawa
Youhei Endo
Yukari Morito

EDITOR    Ayuko Kiyoshi