After racing in a giant circle across the Bangkok airport, accomplishing none of my wifi dependent tasks I hoped to do before my second (this) flight, I’ve finally just sat down at the same seat I got out of about half an hour. To clarify, my airport lap was not accidental: it was necessary to re-board my Singapore-bound flight for its Bangkok-Singapore leg. The flight was delayed for a few hours in the Narita airport this morning, which effectively turned my expected two-hour layover into a two-minute layover. During those two minutes, I managed to buy overpriced airport dried mango in attempts to combat the overpriced water onboard Scoot Airlines and lack of functioning water fountain in the airport. (The credit card limit at the store next to my gate was $10, so I had to buy mango + water to get the water before boarding.) At least Scoot airlines will never get my $4 for a bottle of water….

Today, however, began on a much more pleasant note. I began the day with an early morning run through some rice paddies about 20 minutes away from Narita Airport (adjacent to the airport hostel I stayed at last night). While I’ve seen many rice paddies in Japan in the past two weeks, I couldn’t help giving some extra thought so how these Narita paddies contrasted the few miniature (adorable) rice paddies I’ve seen on multiple rooftops in Tokyo . And how much more similar these expansive paddies were to the ones I’ve biked through in Milan’s South Agricultural Park about a month ago, now. As I’ve just surpassed the halfway mark of this summer’s trip, the similarities and interesting comparisons between my research in each city are cropping up everywhere (pun intended). I’m finding it more and more difficult to not interrupt my interviewees to tell them about a similar story in Budapest or how well they’d get along with some of my Milanese research contacts.

City Farm Odaiba’s rooftop rice paddy (and me)

Escalator the Odaiba City Farm (7th floor of a mall on a man-made island full of malls, next to the bowling alley)

So, while I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: it consistently astounds and excites me how many similar stories of social, political, and environmental movements to develop local food systems (LFS) have occurred in parallel across the world. This summer, I’ve spoken to politicians, researchers, activists, business owners, and consumers who all recognize and seek to propagate the importance of urban residents connecting/reconnecting with their food sources. That connection/reconnection to one’s food sources can manifest in many different ways: e.g. through establishing direct consumer-producer relations, by growing one’s own food, or even by simply noticing domestic and regional labels in the produce aisle of a supermarket. Yet no matter what form of LFS I’ve been studying this summer, I’ve been continuously reassured that understanding where one’s food comes from is for some reason imperative in securing an economically viable, socially just, and environmentally friendly food system.

However, as inclined and motivated as my research contacts around the world are to advance LFS development, not all people share the desire and/or economic privilege to support LFS’s growth. Of course, that fact is a key motivator of my research: this summer, I hope to gain insight into how LFS can be more accessible to and beneficial for people of all socioeconomic classes. Paradoxically, however, the current exclusivity of many LFS—whether caused by cost or cultural barriers to entrance—often contributes to the decline of certain, established LFS.

Certain resounding paradoxes of how to develop accessible LFS  were revealed to me during an interview yesterday with Mr. Hiroshi Toyoshima, from ‘PR and Social Movement Section’ of Daichi wo Mamoru Kai. Daichi wo Mamoru Kai, or Daichi, is one of Japan’s oldest, most well-established, and largest online organic food delivery systems. When I encountered Daichi’s stand at the farmers’ market last week, I had little idea how relevant the company’s development is to my research on post-WWII Japanese LFS development.

Daichi emerged from the same backdrop of food safety crises that spurred the development of Teikei, Japan’s system of direct producer-consumer distribution, and other consumer cooperatives in the early 1970s. However, Daichi’s origin can be traced more specifically to the failure of the ‘Student Movement’ in the late 1960s. The Japanese Student Movement, which opposed topics ranging from the Anpo treaty to the Vietnam War, failed to gain significant regard and response from the Japanese government.

Mr. Fujimoto, Daichi’s founder, was a prominent student activist, and he was quite disappointed when the Student Movement fizzled out. So, even as Mr. Fujimoto joined his student counterparts in finding work elsewhere, he sought to find an alternative way to make positive social change. At his new job at a publishing company, Mr. Fujimoto learned about what he found to be a peculiar phenomenon: how Japanese farmers used many chemicals to make “the perfect” fruits and vegetables to sell to the market but at the same time produced organic varieties of the same crops to consume themselves. Mr. Fujimoto also recognized the country’s rising fears about food safety, and he sought utilize his newfound knowledge to help make the country’s food supply safer.

Daichi was first established as a pro-organic NGO. The organization’s initial goals were two-fold: one, to get more farmers to produce using organic methods and two, to find customers for those farmers. Two years after its establishment, Daichi’s leaders realized the expansive resources needed to conduct their proposed work. They quit their jobs, and in 1977, transitioned Daichi from an NGO to a for-profit enterprise.

At this point, many Teikei members criticized Daichi for advocating organic food sales over the anti-capitalist ideals of “mutual assistance,” which are outlined in the Teikei Principles. During the 1970s, Daichi also tried marketing its organic food to agricultural cooperatives, yet the cooperatives rejected Daichi’s market structure for their established, barter-like systems. (These same agricultural cooperatives started purchasing organic food from similar market sources 5-to-10 years later.)

Despite criticism by other pro-local and pro-organic Japanese food distribution schemes, Daichi’s goal has always been to increase the sustainability of organic farming in Japan. Since the company’s inception, Mr. Fujimoto has recognized the importance of providing a fair, secure income to organic farmers to ensure that those farmers can continue to produce organic crops in the upcoming years.

Through the late 1980s, Daichi did this by providing an established group buying structure through which consumers could gain easy access to environmentally and socially sustainable food sources. In the late 80s, Daichi made its business more accessible and simple for consumers by transitioning to an individual ordering system.

Images of Daichi’s catalogue

While Daichi doesn’t require its producers to be certified organic, they must adhere to Daichi’s own rigorous production standards, which incorporate many organic principles. Furthermore, a key part of Daichi’s business activities are its social activities, which have ranged from organizing anti-GMO protests to hosting educational farm trips for school groups.

Today, Daichi operates primarily through its website. It connects its 300,000 customers to 2,500 producers, and the company maintains close relationships with each of those producers. Despite Daichi’s successes, however, the company has struggled to maintain its long-term sustainability. It has had difficulty attracting new customers, and the majority of its current customer base are in the 40s or older. Mr. Toyoshima attributes Daichi’s inability to attract young consumers to young people’s “inability to read sentences very carefully.” He cites young people’s busy lives, economic constraints, and familiarity with small screens and catchy advertisements as why they don’t choose to order food from Daichi instead of other online retailers, which tend to be less expensive and sell a only a small percentage of organic food.

Perhaps some of Daichi’s troubles will be answered this fall, when it merges with Oisix, another online food retailer. Unlike Daichi, Oisix currently maintains a younger consumer base. Oisix doesn’t have as rigorous of quality standards as Daichi, and the food items it sells are generally less expensive than their Daichi counterparts. However, Mr. Toyoshima described to me Daichi’s and Oisix’s current combined efforts, through which Daichi has started selling some of its products through Oisix’s online platform, and many customers are beginning to choose the higher quality, more expensive (Daichi) products over the Oisix ones.

Mr. Toyoshima has high hopes for the upcoming Daichi-Oisix merger, yet Daichi still faces much uncertainty ahead. Mr. Toyoshima is particularly anxious about the Daichi’s transition from a private to public company: he fears that the new shareholders will inhibit Daichi’s engagement in CSR activities and restrict the company to more mainstream market activities. Sure, it’s been ten years since Daichi’s last anti-GMO protest, yet the upcoming merger may make it harder to Daichi to prioritize any sort of oscial activities.

Finally, the paradox I mentioned about 850 words ago (sorry, these posts are long, I know):

Based on Mr. Fujimata’s and Daichi’s principles, the best way to secure a sustainable local food system—one based on the principles of organic farming—is to ensure organic farmers’ income and livelihoods to ensure they will continue to produce organic products. To continue ensuring organic farmers’ incomes, Daichi must increase its consumer base. To do that, Daichi tries to make more Japanese people interested in buying organic products: It does this through educational activities as well as providing an easy outlet (online shop) for customers to purchase organic products. However, past a certain threshold, Daichi cannot recruit anymore consumers who are really dedicated to purchasing organic food over less expensive food. Daichi then has to resort to cost-cutting techniques to attract new, cost-conscious customers. To make costs lower, however, Daichi has to sacrifice some of its quality standards or profit margin to farmers, both which reduces the company’s contributions to Japan’s food security.

~ Paradox 1 ~

More Daichi customers –> increased Japanese food security

But Daichi’s only potential customers left are those who value immediate cost-savings over organic principles

To recruit those customers, Daichi has to lower its organic standards and potentially risk decreasing its company’s contributions to increasing Japanese food security

After two weeks in Japan, I’ve experienced another significant revelation in terms of my personal opinions of food security. Before I began this trip, I was highly skeptical of whether local food systems can (I highly recommend the book The Locavore’s Dilemma) ensure a country’s food security any better—or even to the same extent—that secured, diversified international food trade networks can. Yet, throughout the course of my research here, I’ve encountered substantial anxiety from a wide range of interviewees about the rising prices of imported foods. Sure, Japan’s imported food supply may be secure to the extent that the country does not face any impending trade barriers due to global conflict. In fact, my first week in Tokyo, Japan and the EU began the new Free Trade Agreement. Furthermore, Japanese government officials currently seek to revive the Trans-Pacific Partnership (even without the U.S.).

Yet strolling down the produces aisles of Japanese supermarkets, I understand why my interviewees are concerned. Yes, the $100, gorgeous packages of gift-wrapped, flawless fruits are something particular to Japanese people’s values of perfection. Yet the prices of more practical commodities, such as butter, sugar, wheat, and meat, are also increasing significantly. These price increases, which can be attributed to rising global fuel prices, increased demand from neighboring countries, like China, and climate-caused lower crop yields internationally, due pose a significant threat to Tokyo’s food security.

And, another paradox: when the economy is not doing well, Japan’s food security declines. Furthermore, increasing Japanese, domestic agricultural production can increase Japan’s food security, especially during rough economic times, by making the country less dependent on imported food with volatile prices. However, as Daichi has experienced, it is very costly to increase Japanese domestic production, and so that might not be possible during economic downturns—when food insecurity is the biggest issue.

~ Paradox 2 ~

Bad economy –> Japanese can’t afford high prices of imported food; food security declines

Increased Japanese, domestic agricultural production –> less expensive food in Japanese markets; food security increases

Bad economy –> too difficult/costly to increase Japanese domestic agricultural production

And with all that, I’m heading out of Japan tomorrow. I’ll arrive in Singapore tomorrow night, where I’m excited to learn from local food proponents in a country that imports over 90 percent of its food supply… yet that is known as the second most food secure nation in the world.

Sunday morning, I woke up early to meet Dr. Masashi Tachiwaka at a farmers’ market. Taiyo Marche, or ‘Market of the Sun’ is regarded as Tokyo’s largest farmers’ market. It hosts about 100 producers of fresh foods, prepared foods, crafts, and other goods every other weekend. Dr. Tachiwaka, a sociologist from Nagoya University who specializes in agriculture and food studies, chose to visit the market together despite that he’d never been before. (If there are any budding food systems researchers out there, I would highly recommend visiting a farmers’ market with a researcher who focuses on food systems studies.)

Taiyo Marche – Market of the Suns

Dr. Tachiwaka and I entered the market together, passed by the large variety of international-themed food trucks, and headed to the information stand. We learned together that the four-year-old market was created and is managed by Mitsui, which per Wikipedia “is one of the largest sogo shosha in Japan… Its business area covers energy, machinery, chemicals, food, textile, logistics, finance, and more.”

I wasn’t able to determine the exact cost structure of the market—i.e. whether/how much Mitsui pays to rent the public park space or how much vendors pay to rent their own spaces. However, Dr. Tachiwaka deduced that Mitsui must make a significant profit from the market. The market takes place in Kachidoki, a residential neighborhood on a man-made island near Tokyo’s center. The existence of the market makes the neighborhood more lively, increasin its popularity and thus, its rent prices (of the homes and developments that Mitsui owns).

I must confess that I’m an avid visitor of farmers’ markets, and thus, the Taiyo Marche looked quite familiar at first. Indeed, there were a bit more jewelry stand than I might normally expect, the stand of imported wine made me laugh, and I was surprised by how almost every individual fruit and vegetable was wrapped in plastic—just like in all Japanese super markets.[*] Yet beyond these few differences, I strolled the aisles accepting samples like a pro, enjoyeing the brightly colored produce around me, and generally thought I had an idea of this market’s basic form and function.

Stand of imported wine

Soon, however, Dr. Tachiwaka began describing to me how different this market is compared to the majority of Japanese farmers’ markets, and I let my farmers’ market expert hubris go. Dr. Tachiwaka explained how most farmers’ markets in Japan are owned by agricultural cooperatives. They take place in permanent locations, where producers drop off their goods in the morning and pick up whatever is left at the end of the day. Taiyo Marche, along with about ten other Tokyo farmers’ markets, where consumers sell their own goods at stands, is still a largely new concept in Japan. It’s a part of what I’d personally categorize as a new wave of local food systems development.

The first wave of LFS development, then, began in the 1960s, following a few drastic incidents where Japanese industrial activities harmed people’s health. While the Kamioka Mine had released significant quantities of cadmium since the beginning of the 20^th century, wartime activities caused the quantity of pollution to significantly increase. The river water, contaminated with cadmium and other heavy metals, was used to irrigate Toyama Prefecture’s rice fields and caused a mass appearance of Itai-Itai disease, or cadmium poisoning. In 1961—almost 50 years after the first case of the disease—the Mitsui Mining and Smelting’s Kamioka Mining Station was finally pinpointed as the source of the cadmium and other heavy metal pollution and the cause of the disease.[†]

In 1956, Chisso Corporation released its industrial wastewater, which contained untreated organic mercury, along the Minimata River. Chisso Co.’s pollution caused Minimata disease, a neurological syndrome caused by severe mercury poisoning. Not only did Japanese people suffer directly from Minimata disease, but the government’s and Chisso Co.’s unsatisfactory responses to the disease prompted growing discontent with and distrust in industry behavior and government policy, which accompanied rising concerns about food safety. In 1965, Showa Denka Co.’s pollution of the Aganogawa River, which caused a second wave of the Minimata Disease, amplified these concerns.

Researchers and conscious consumers with whom I’ve discussed topics of food safety in Japan have rattled off lists of how Japanese industry and industrial agriculture (not to mention non-Japanese agriculture) have harmed Japanese people’s health for over the last half-century: e.g. factory smoke in Yokkaichi City and Kawasaki City have caused unprecedented rates of asthma, food additives used in the 1960s contaminated breast milk and caused infant deaths, fake “organic” and “no chemical” labels have deceived consumers about the safety of their food, pesticides continuously harm humans’ health, and Fukushima contaminated food supplies….

After WWII, Japan underwent massive economic and industrial growth. By 1970, the GNP was rising by 10 percent a year. The Japan Organic Agriculture Association (JOAA) was established in response to how “hasty industrialization brought about environment contamination and destruction” (Japan Organic Agriculture Association, 1993, p. 1).[‡] The JOAA, established in 1971, is an independent, non-profit organization comprised mostly of producers and consumers who seek to expand organic agriculture in Japan. It is funded exclusively by membership fees and thus remains independent of any government or corporate affiliations. At the time of its founding, the JOAA recognized a number of serious problems with “modern agriculture” in Japan: a declining number of farmers, increasing age of farmers, and decline of the amount of farmland; soil degradation due to large-scale successive monoculture and loss of humus; a rise in plant diseases and pests caused by a loss of a natural ecological balance; agriculture-caused chemical contamination of human bodies, agricultural produce, soil, and water; and a declining food self-sufficiency rate and am increasing quantity of imported livestock feed.

To combat these problems, the JOAA established the “teikei” system, a direct distribution system between producers and consumers. Yet JOAA literature emphasizes how describing Teikei as just a way of selling or distributing farm produce to consumers does not do Teikei justice. Teikei “is not in a true sense of the meaning a transaction of merchandise. Rather, it is an amicable interactive relationship between people. The underlying philosophy is not that of competition but of coexistence and symbiosis based on mutual support, the spirt of cooperation… Teikei is a holistic system…a comprehensive cultural activity that gives self-reliance to farmers and a new life culture to consumers. ” (JOAA, p. 5-6, 2010.) Furthermore, Ichiraku Tero, a preeminent philosopher and the creator of the Ten Principles of Teikei also preached self-reliance and mutual support based on independence and autonomy of the individual. Today, Teikei is still best defined by its ten founding principles:

One important clarification is the difference between the significance of ‘organic’ in JOAA’s name and in Japanese food policy/broader food discourse. The JOAA’s principles of organic, and how they manifest in Teikei, span far beyond the. The Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestsry, and Fishery’s “Specified JAS [Organic] Standard.” In fact, JOAA has taken a public stance against to the JAS standard. JOAA members disagree with the JAS’s vague delineations of what makes something organic, such as production “with a reduced amount of chemicals” and “products with a small amount of chemicals.” JOAA members also perceive that and disagree with how the government’s certification program is greatly influenced by the demand of profit-seeking organizations (JOAA, p. 6, 1993).

In contrast to the inadequate government organic standards, a report published by the JOAA in 2010 describes Teikei as “a new relationship that can save humanity and nature and is a quiet revolution to build an everlasting stable society in place of the capitalist economy” (Michio, p. 7, 2010). The report describes how “through this humble but strong movement, we have developed the sustainability of food, making it possible to secure a livelihood for both producers and consumers. Teikei has become the driving force for organic agriculture based on rural nature and culture” (JOAA Committee for Organic Agriculture Production, p. 5, 2010). Yet, while Teikei might have increased the sustainability of food production practices in Japan, is the movement sustainable itself?

Dr. Hiroko Kubota, a consumer movement researcher in the Faculty of Economics at Kokugakuin University is skeptical whether Teikei will persist alongside the aging of its original members, shift in Japanese consumer preferences, and urban residents’ increasingly busy urban lifestyles. Dr. Kubota, a member of three Teikei groups herself, has observed Teikei membership and the number of Teikei groups significantly decline in the past decade. Despite that young Japanese people didn’t personally experience the numerous food safety crises that motivated the founding of Taikei and caused many initial members to join Teikei, Dr. Kubota described how younger Japanese generations still are quite concerned about food safety. However, Dr. Kubota clearly stated, “young people don’t want to join a movement”—whether they’re too busy with work, their smartphones, or whatever— “so we have to create another kind of system to support small farmers.” Rather than expand their extra time resources to participation in a participant-led Teikei group, young people in Tokyo are increasingly turning to other markets to buy organic and local food, such as farm shops, farmers’ markets, and online food delivery services.

And so, back to the Taiyo Marche farmers’ market. As we wandered through the farmers’ market aisles, Dr. Tachiwaka pointed out to me one “organic” stand. We stopped to talk to the producers, and as I learned a bit more, I was surprised to find that this stand wasn’t in fact run by any single organic farmer or even any organic agricultural cooperative. Rather, it was run by Daichi, one of the largest web-based agricultural delivery services in Japan.

Daichi stand

I’m meeting with a member of Daichi’s Corporate Social Responsibility Department next week, so I’ll hold off on too much detail about the company for now. However, some that I’ve learned through some preliminary emails (and of course, Google Translating the company’s webpage)… Daichi wo Mamoru kai, or Daichi, delivers (organic) produce, dry goods, meats, eggs, fish/seafood, dairy, among other items all over Japan. The company was established in 1977, following its prior establishment as a pro-organic NGO a few years earlier. Today, the company’s mission is to promote domestic agricultural industries, and the company’s leaders are highly motivated by Japan’s low food self-sufficiency rate. Daichi’s customers are primarily well-educated, well-off financially, and in their 40s or over. However Daichi will soon merge with Oisix, a similar company with a younger consumer base. Both of these companies currently answer Japanese market demand for reliable, high-quality, organic, domestic food products, which urban residents can obtain without the need to devote excessive time resources to obtain—although they may end up spending a bit more money.

Before we left the Daichi stand at the farmers’ market, one of the workers gave me a packet of kale—three long kale leaves in a plastic bag. He said something about the holes on the kale caused by a caterpillar. While I wasn’t sure if the caterpillar holes meant why he didn’t care about giving up the kale—whether he wasn’t allowed to sell it or if people just weren’t likely to buy that bag of kale—I graciously accepted my ~27^th fresh food item given to me since I’ve been in Tokyo.

See some kale in the top right corner

Another stand I was pleasantly surprised by at the farmers’ market was run by the producer located closest to the market—just on a nearby rooftop! The farmers’ market stand serves a dual purpose for the community farm: It’s an outlet for the farm to sell excess vegetables, and it’s also a way for the community farm owner to advertise his farm. The owner of the rooftop farm, Mr. Umehara, was motivated to create the farm for environmental reasons: to help mitigate the heat island effect. Yet today, he thinks the greatest benefit are how many people are involved and benefit from the community farm. There are currently ten families who work on the farm. They each farm their own plots and share the harvest. One family also owns a restaurant, and they incorporate the crops they produce on the farm into their dishes at the restaurant. The plot rental fee is not insignificant, yet it is less than that of other rooftop, community or allotment farms in Tokyo–likely given that Mr. Umehara’s friend owns the building, so he does not have to pay rent.

Community farm’s farmers’ market stand

Flyer on the community farm

(Poor) Google image translation of the flyer for the community farm

Given the apparent prosperity of Tokyo and the surrounding regions I’ve visited, it’s difficult to fathom Japan’s high poverty rate. A 2015 survey by Japan’s Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry found that 1 in every 7 children were from families living on less than half of the national median household disposable income. Like the local food systems I have studied in other countries, prominent local food systems I’m studying in Tokyo can be exclusionary due to potential consumers required financial and  time resources. The intense time resources required to participate in Teikei have caused younger generations to prefer to purchase organic, local food from online delivery services instead of self-organized producer-consumer networks. And while organic online shops might sell at higher prices than  the produce found in supermarkets, the time young people save by not visiting the supermarket makes the price increase of online shopping relatively insignificant. Furthermore, other online delivery services, like Seiyu and Co-op, actually sell domestic (organic and not organic) food at lower prices than supermarkets. The rising popularity of online food shopping is likely to have great implications for the further development of local food systems in Japan, and in their accessibility to difference socioeconomic groups of people.

Meanwhile, the cost of renting plots at urban farms in Tokyo remains prohibitively expensive for the majority of Tokyo residents. While this is not the case in other cities and regions throughout Japan, I wonder what the cost-barriers of agrileisure means for Tokyo residents’ physical engagement in food production. Can kitchen and terrace gardens provide people with the same fulfilling connection to food production that shared farming spaces can? What are the different benefits and challenges of individually-developed, private (micro?…) local food systems versus community-based local food systems?

Finally, if you’ve made it to the end of this blog post, thanks for following my 17 different tangents of thought! I’m currently in practice to tie together one research trip to 7 countries studying ~15 different types of local food systems into one final report. And in the meantime, I still have about 25 types of food to try in Tokyo.

Sources:

Japan Organic Agriculture Association. (1993). ‘TEIKEI’ system of Japanese Organic Agriculture Movement: Country Report for the First IFOAM Asian Conference.

Japan Organic Agriculture Association, Committee for Organic Agriculture Promotion (2010, Oct). Teikei Networks for Forests, Homelands and the Seas – All Connected Through Humus: River Basin Region Self Sufficiency and Teikei will Drive Organic Agriculture.

[*] This is a key hint to Japanese citizens’ concerns about food safety, and more on that later!

[†] Yes, this is the same Mistui company that created the farmers’ market I visited today.