The
fields appear to have been laid out by a survey crew. The
raised rows are perfectly parallel, each packed tightly under
plastic like ground beef at the supermarket. Young potato
plants that are as unnaturally uniform as the trees lining
sidewalks in Tokyo poke through most of the covers. Looking
at the rows not yet planted, I wonder if they are perhaps
growing the plastic itself; I imagine the farmers at harvest
time walking slowly down the rows, pulling the new crop off
the field and folding it into perfect square bundles.
Osamu Yoshino must drive all those farmers crazy. His field
jogs out diagonally into a neighbor’s bare ground, then
swings around in a half-circle rimmed with deep green grass
almost defiantly curly. The rows are varied—three onions,
three grass, two daikon. There’s a blue tarp here, a
red basket there. Sticks and weeds are bundled carefully with
twine and leaned against the trees, which in turn hang their
longest branches back over the dirt. In fact, sitting in the
corner of 30 acres of chemical farms, this field feels more
similar to the neighboring forest—like a child raised
by wolves. And yet Yoshino is the only human among all the
fields; the rest appear to be managed by remote control.
Even without another farmer for comparison, this lithe, handsome
man looks different. He has a pink hand towel tied around
his head as a hat, a black warm-up jacket with the SUPERSTAR
brand logo in red on the chest, and longish fingernails that
reach past his fingertips. To me he looks so young and almost
hip it’s hard to believe he is a native of this little
village, the son of farmers.
To me he looks so young
and almost hip it’s hard to believe he is a native
of this little village, the son of farmers.
He grew up farming same as the rest: he didn’t like
using chemicals, but figured there was no alternative. The
difference: he was willing to experiment. One season he decided
to forego using herbicides on a rice paddy. Proving the suspicious
neighbors right, it was a disaster. There were far more weeds
than Yoshino could remove himself, and the field went to pot.
The local Shumei center saw it as an opening. They coerced
Yoshino into doing a Natural Agriculture trial that left the
paddy free of not just herbicides, but all additives. Once
again the weeds were tremendous, but this time Yoshino had
an unexpected replacement for the sprays. When it came time
for him to weed the field, he was joined by scores of Shumei
volunteers.
The success that resulted convinced Yoshino to gradually
convert all of his five acres to Natural Agriculture. He knew
it would mean a loss in yields, but figured he would adjust
his lifestyle; he could live leanly. The new approach would
require more manpower, but he grew to trust his volunteers.
There was only one problem he couldn’t solve: nobody
would buy the food.
He had tried selling at the local Shumei center, but without
much luck. The members were sympathetic, but still used to
supermarket produce that was both perfect-looking and unrestricted
by season. In the moderate climate east of Tokyo, Yoshino
had customers only when the desirable vegetables were harvested—which
was not often enough. When even meager survival became impossible,
he told another Shumei member that he couldn’t continue
without a market for his crops. Her response: “Just
tell me how many customers you need and I’ll get them.”
Keiko Domae never wastes time. No sooner does she confront
a problem than she is already solving it. She had a long history
of pairing people with food, so to her the solution to Yoshino’s
market problem was a simple equation: all they needed was
to establish within Shumei a food buying group similar to
the co-ops she had helped form throughout Chiba prefecture.
“There’s no way it will work,” Yoshino
remembers telling her. When she asked why, he said, “Because
you buy what you want to eat. That’s the consumer way.”
He knew that as a Natural Agriculture farmer he couldn’t
possibly satisfy the demands of a conventional palate. Because
he understood the natural cycles, he could be happy eating
stored root vegetables through the winter or solely greens
in early spring; but he didn’t think Domae and the food-buying
group she envisioned could.
Because [Yoshino] understood
the natural cycles, he could be happy eating stored root
vegetables through the winter or solely greens in early
spring; but ... He knew that as a Natural Agriculture farmer
he couldn’t possibly satisfy the demands of a conventional
palate.
For the moment he was right. Domae had long wanted to provide
her family with safe food, but never once had she considered
seasonality. For her, a pork cutlet was naturally served with
cabbage and fresh tomatoes, 12 months a year. All of her co-ops
had been successful, but she always ended up leaving because
the objective shifted: they would go from providing safe food
to providing convenience food cheaply.
“Each one claimed to be supporting healthy attitudes
toward food,” she says, “but really the relationship
was no different from that in a supermarket.” Now it
was clear that the missing link was the relationship with
the farmer.
Once again, the solution seemed simple. Domae gathered 60
members for a direct farmer to consumer arrangement, or CSA
(Community Supported Agriculture), who vowed to adjust their
diets to the natural cycle, and Yoshino kept growing. But
for the members to keep their promise, they had to understand
what they were adjusting to. As she says now, “The only
way to do that was to stand with the farmer in his field.”
Yoshino laughs when he remembers the first time Domae waded
into the rice paddy to weed. “I remember her screaming,”
he says. She’s not a dainty woman, but the mud squishing
through her toes was too much. Shaking his head, Yoshino told
her to just go sit down or work elsewhere on the farm.
That time she did excuse herself, but she later returned,
again and again. Today, after seven years, she can give a
tour of the farm herself. The original buying group has grown
into a network of CSAs that covers the Greater Tokyo area.
It encompasses 24 groups of consumers and employs 60 farmers,
20 of them full time. A fax and e-mail system links the farmers’
surpluses to CSAs throughout the rest of the country, and
a similar network allows Shumei members to buy processed staples
like soy sauce from specialized Natural Agriculture producers.
Of all the group’s achievements, though, Domae seems
most proud of this: “People have come and gone,”
she says, “but those 60 original families are all still
with us.”
Domae gathered 60 members
... who vowed to adjust their diets to the natural cycle
... But for the members to keep their promise, they had
to understand what they were adjusting to. As she says now,
“The only way to do that was to stand with the farmer
in his field.”
* * *
Just down the road from
Yoshino is the farm of Shigenori Hayashi, a non-Natural Agriculture
organic farmer whose solo CSA feeds 60 families. We are here
walking the fields in the spring rain—Hayashi pointing
to everything he sees and talking excitedly, I spinning a
bit from the shock of this place.
After a week on Natural Agriculture farms, I’m struck
by how professional his operation is, how homogenous. The
rows are long and narrow, each planted in a single crop from
one end to the other, 120 meters away. (Hayashi knows this
distance off the top of his head.) No weeds separate the rows.
In fact, the only breath between crops is strips of bare soil,
flat and neatly tilled and awaiting their planting. Despite
the cool spring there are already maybe 20 things growing
here, including parsley, wheat, and peas that arise from black
plastic.
Standing in the greenhouse amidst a tidy sea of seed trays,
I realize why this place is so strange: it looks just like
an organic farm in the States. My perspective has been so
skewed by the Natural Agriculture farms, that this order and
planning—these eggplants and peppers in gallon pots,
this lettuce planted in dirt free of weeds, these employees—it
all suddenly seems sterile.
* * *
Reading this now, back
in the States, I can say I’m no longer jarred by the
sight of an organic farm. And yet as I walk through acres
around me in Northern California, their differences from Natural
Agriculture fields are glaring. Neither approach seems inherently
superior, but that’s because they are trying to accomplish
different things. One is a business; heartfelt, yes, but still
a business. The other is a religion.
When I visited Japan in late April, Hayashi had started sweet
potatoes in a deep bin in his greenhouse. Even in the rain
the soil sat at about 90 degrees, which meant the vines were
growing like mad, their purple veins threading through deep
green leaves. Once planted out, they would be way ahead of
the season. On the same day at Yoshino’s, the seed sweet
potatoes grew in the field, shielded from birds by a mesh
tunnel anchored with sacks of rice hulls. They grew slowly
and would be harvested later than Hayashi’s—and
pretty much everyone’s—but that didn’t bother
him. He had chosen that approach to be closer to what happens
in nature. Getting an early crop was unimportant, perhaps
even antithetical.
...at Yoshino’s,
the seed sweet potatoes grew in the field, shielded from
birds by a mesh tunnel anchored with sacks of rice hulls.
They grew slowly and would be harvested later than Hayashi’s—and
pretty much everyone’s—but that didn’t
bother him.
At least in the case of Yoshino and Hayashi, the difference
between Natural Agriculture and standard organic farming is
the way the market drives the choices. For instance, Hayashi
grows udo, a traditional “mountain vegetable,”
in a pitch-black room with mounds of dirt on the floor—literally
a walk-in cooler that has been unplugged. In the wild, the
asparagus-like stalk would grow in natural light and turn
green, but here the objective is an entirely blanched stalk—like
the Japanese consumer is used to.
Needless to say, Yoshino wouldn’t dream of growing
udo that way, but he has that luxury because of his customers’
commitment to the emulation of nature. Their role has become
like that of the passive consumer in the wild. A deer, for
instance, takes what nature gives it without demand or expectation
and rolls silently with the vagaries of season and weather.
Likewise Domae and the others are devoted to taking what Yoshino
and the elements give them.
When times of trouble do come, Hayashi can fall back on some
pest protection with a spray made from ground-up insects and
fortify tired fields with manure and compost. His customers
don’t demand it, but his goal is to provide them food,
and that seems the most effective way. When a crop fails for
Yoshino, he can do nothing but watch and wonder how to manage
it differently next time. “Unless you’re prepared
to do that physically, mentally, and financially you can’t
switch to Natural Agriculture,” he says. “It gives
you no safety net.”
* * *
The difference in technique
would seem to separate the two ideologies, but Yoshino maintains
that those differences are what they have to teach one another.
While organic farming in Japan is part of an alternative culture,
Natural Agriculture comes from a spiritual belief that is
driving to change things within a conventional world. In Shumei,
growers switch over directly from chemical farming and fast
food consumers throw themselves into seasonal eating. Because
the change is led by deep conviction in an abstract concept,
the transition can be bumpy. Yoshino admits that many Natural
Agriculture farmers follow the idea rather blindly; they believe
in the concept, but struggle to translate it into successful
farming technique.
On the other hand, organic farmers like Hayashi have very
precise goals that are both practical and ideological: eliminate
pesticide use, provide safe food, and serve like-minded customers.
Yoshino argues that that experience, wherein motivation and
technique are the same, is exactly what Natural Agriculture
farmers need to make their approach work. Likewise, Yoshino
admires Hayashi’s absolute conviction. Not that Natural
Agriculture farmers don’t trust their goal, but it’s
a more difficult one to wrap their heads around. Success is
just plain simpler when you aim to eliminate pesticides than
when you aim to create a heaven on earth.
But what organic farmers have in conviction, Natural Agriculture
farmers have in devotion. They return their fields immediately
and completely, rather than taking what they see as the slow
road of holding onto things such as B.t. and animal fertilizer—which
provide a safety net but seem to compromise core values. Domae
would add that this absolute transformation extends beyond
mere technique. She says, “I had always thought, Yes,
we have this great philosophy, but making a living is a separate
thing. Now I know that if you really want to understand nature
and the true meaning of living, you can’t separate them.”
“I had always thought,
Yes, we have this great philosophy, but making a living
is a separate thing. Now I know that if you really want
to understand nature and the true meaning of living, you
can’t separate them.”
And so Natural Agriculture consumers make sacrifices to allow
the farmers to join craft and spirit in a fashion unfettered
by finances. Having been given this chance, Yoshino speaks
of his non-Natural Agriculture non-organic neighbors almost
with pity. In his eyes, farmers driven entirely by the market
aren’t always free to make the best choices. “For
them, farming has become a way of making a living, rather
than a way of living itself. They can’t get out of the
web they got trapped in, thinking this is the only way they
can survive.”
Now Hayashi is hardly a slave to the grind; even in the steely
rain he radiates such joy from his farm that it’s difficult
to see him as a victim. He is somewhere on that continuum
of what farming should be, just as the plastic farmers are,
just as Yoshino is. For now Natural Agriculture and organics
are distinct marks on that continuum, their objectives and
the worlds they exist in so disparate. But Yoshino believes
that they are converging into one practice.
“Yes, technically we’re different, but [we’re]
both trying to get to the same goal,” he says. “In
the future, our differences will be fewer. It’s almost
like the practices that are meant to be will prevail. Some
of it is what you do in the field, some of it is what you
think while you’re doing it. What those should be exactly,
we’ll only find out in time.”
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