This morning started off with an assurance that I’ll be making friends quickly in Tokyo: my (accidentally) extra loud alarm went off at 7 a.m. in my first many-bed hostel room of the trip! Despite that I just arrived in Tokyo 12 hours earlier, however, and the fact that I jumped ahead 7 hours from Europe to Asia, I quickly headed off to a tour of Kashiwa, which I scheduled months ago.

Tokyo is the one city in which I didn’t totally narrow my research focus before arriving. So far, my itinerary includes agricultural tours of a few cities that border Tokyo’s metropolitan area, some meetings with agricultural researchers, a coordinator of Japan’s Organic Agriculture Association, individuals involved in Tokyo’s Slow Food organizations, and plans to snoop around some train station rooftop urban farms. I was originally attracted to conducting a segment of my research in Tokyo due to Japan’s low rate of self-sufficiency (~40%), which contrasts rising trends of ‘agrileisure.’ Today’s visit to Kashiwa quickly and powerfully illustrated to me the contradiction and potential, unrealized synergy between Japan’s decreasing popularity of “professional” farming and increasing trends of agrileisure. And, as it keeps happening, I again collected enough material in one day to fill up ten pages of an eventual research paper. I suppose some of the research focus narrowing can happen later….

The term ‘agrileisure’ is an emerging conceptual framework that connects recreation, tourism, and leisure to agricultural context. Two obvious examples of agrileisure are hobby farming and working in a community garden. In Tokyo, there is an increasing trend of city dwellers renting plots of land in the city or nearby rural areas to grow their own produce. There are growing numbers of urban plots, such as those located on train stations and in office buildings, to accommodate this. However, while agrileisure may contribute to a select few city dwellers’ personal well-being, it remains an exclusive activity for people with the time and financial resources. Furthermore, those people that engage in farming for pleasure or household production may be clued into niche social trends and have an exceptional awareness of the complex challenges and consequences of Japan’s declining agricultural sector and high import rate.

Kashiwa, which I visited today, has just over 400,000 inhabitants (in contrast to Tokyo’s 13 million). It’s located in Chiba Prefecture, right on the border of Tokyo. Kashiwa is largely a commuter town, yet food processing industries comprise an important part of its economy. Furthermore, while pale in comparison to Kashiwa’s agricultural predominance during Japan’s Edo period, there is a significant base of residual commercial and hobby farming activities. Given Kashiwa’s suburb status, agricultural history, and greater land availability, the cost barrier to agrileisure is lower than that in Tokyo. Nonetheless, the hobby farmers whom I met in Kashiwa today still conveyed certain motivations for, challenges of, and more general trends of agrileisure that exist in Tokyo and throughout Japan.

I started my day today by meeting the owner of one of the largest farms in Kashiwa. Mr. Someya’s farm has come a long way since he switched from farmer to bus driver back to farmer in his early twenties and his parents gave him 1.5 hectares of land in 1976. Today, Mr. Someya owns 150 hectares of farmland, employs 300 workers, and sells his rice, wheat, potatoes, soybeans throughout Kashiwa City. He sells his rice directly to local elementary schools, restaurants, and a popular chain, Italian family-style restaurant; his potatoes to a potato chip company; his soybeans to stores that sell tofu in Kashiwa city and other markets; and his wheat to the Central Union of Agricultural Co-operatives (also known as JA-Zenchu). Mr. Someya believes strongly in the sales and consumption of local food due for health-related, environmental, socioeconomic, and cultural reasons.

When I asked him about the importance of local food, Mr. Someya began by describing how his, and other local farmers’, crops are safer and healthier than imported food or unsourced food in supermarkets because he uses fewer harmful pesticides in production. There is widespread concern in Japan about how chemicals used in farming pose harm to people’s health, yet Mr. Someya feels a personal obligation to help maintains the wellbeing of his community members in Kashiwa. Throughout our conversation, Mr. Someya emphasized how much he cares about people, both consumers and farmers. Indeed, much of Mr. Someya’s life work has gone towards supporting local farmers in Kashiwa.

Mr. Someya Giving a Tour of his Fields

While Mr. Someya has observed many challenges for farmers in Japan in the past half century, one of his main criticisms is how JA-Zenchu fails to support small farmers. Rather, through a somehow still cheery, bright presence, Mr. Someya explained to me today how Japan’s agricultural union fails to reduce risk for farmers and instead runs like a business, prioritizing profits over supporting farmers. For example, the union only pays farmers for crops the union collected from them after the union a third party buys those crops from the union. The union also rents and sells farm materials, like machines and fertilizer, at a high cost, which is in addition to the union’s membership fee.

Mr. Someya also explained a few other reasons why current conditions for Japanese farmers look bleak. After World War II, the government lowered the permitted percentage of Japanese land that could be used to farm rice. In the 1950s and 60s, many farmers opted to take the government payout and stop farming completely. Furthermore, in the past 50 years, the Japanese government has focused on industry rather than farming, which has increased farmers’ risk, lowered farmers’ potential profit margins, and decreased citizens’ appreciation for farmers. Mr. Someya has been deeply affected by the Japanese government’s and citizens’ disrespect for and criticism towards agriculture. Strong anti-farming sentiments extend throughout Japan and have even been provoked in Kashiwa by a famous television commentators who gave a speech there to disparage agriculture in the face of Japan’s rising industrial economy. Furthermore, Mr. Someya’s children used to be ashamed of their father’s job.

Mr. Someya’s Rice Paddies

In the past thirty years, however, Mr. Someya has taken concrete steps to galvanize respect for farmers in Kashiwa. Most recently, he’s collaborated with local elementary schools to teach children where their food comes from. Through school visits and invitations to his paddy fields, Mr. Someya has experienced success in changing many children’s opinions towards farmers. But perhaps his greatest success is that his children have now decided to succeed him in managing his farm when he retires.

Mr. Someya’s passion for farming, concern about Japan’s low self-sufficiency rate, and compassion for Japanese citizens has prompted him to do what he can to encourage more young people to start farming. Thirty years ago, in the face of Japan’s unfavorable agricultural policies, Mr. Someya established the Kashiwa farmers’ market. Through today, the Kashiwa farmers’ market has increased the financial opportunities and decreased the social stigma for young people to pursue a career in agriculture.

Recently, other new food networks popping up through Kashiwa have further secured small farmers’ market entry points (that are independent of the controversial way the union sells farmers’ crops). Later during my day in Kashiwa, I visited one brand new farm shop, located in a modest window right next to the city’s main station. The owner of the farm shop opened his store this June with the main goal of supporting young farmers in Kashiwa. While the shop is still in a “trial run” period, he hopes it will ultimately serve as an outlet the help ensure Kashiwa farmers have a secure, consistent income. And certainly, the shop’s central location in the center of an urban shopping center should help that. One other unconventional place local farmers’ have recently been able to sell their crops locally in is a section of a larger grocery stores that essentially functions as a farmers’ markets.

My meeting with Mr. Someya was a surprisingly intense, genuine, and exceptionally informative way to start out my first day in Japan! Furthermore, Mr. Someya’s distict, distinguished perspective created a stunning contrast between my visit with him and my next visit of the day: to the Matsumara’s home.

As I entered the Matsumara’s traditional Japanese-style home, I was immediately overwhelmed with the second warm welcome of the day, along with the fresh fruits and vegetables (in addition to tea and sweets) that kept being piled on the table in front of me throughout my discussion with Mr. Matsumara, his wife, his daughter, and his daughter’s husband.

An ideal interview set-up

Ginger and tomatoes fresh from the greenhouses

Mr. Matsumara led a successful career growing flowers for three decades, and he is now approaching retirement. While flower growing may not be the most tradition form of farming within Kashiwa, his daughter’s “retirement” from farming five years ago depicts the lack of opportunity for young people in the agricultural industry in Japan. After 16 years of helping with her father’s work, Ms. Matsumara and her husband switched to a career in real estate. Today, Ms. Matsumara hates to leave her father working alone, yet she purposefully does not help her father in his many greenhouses because she doesn’t want to give him false hope that she will return to a farming career or for him to plant more crops than he can handle on his own. “I have to draw the line somewhere,” she said.

Mr. Matsumara and his tomato plants

Beyond flower growing, another key part of the Matsumara’s lifestyle and diet is all the food they grow for their own consumption. Right now, the Matsumara’s grow zucchini, peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, ginger, and tomatoes (so many tomatoes).

Despite that Ms. Matsumara doesn’t actively engage in farming, she is deeply engaged with local food culture. In fact, one key reason why she stopped farming is due to her distaste for how industrial farming works in Japan and other countries. For example, the Matsumara’s can only buy F1 seeds sold by large agricultural companies, due to those companies’ patents. Furthermore, the corresponding plants’ growth is limited without the use of pesticides and fertilizer sold by the same companies that sell the seeds. While the ~40 of the Matsumara’s tomatoes I ate yesterday were delicious, even they were grown with these seeds that comes from the world’s complicated, problematic system of industrial agriculture. Ms. Matsumara is also very concerned about the use of pesticides in conventional agriculture, the chemicals used to keep foods safe as they are transported internationally, and the ‘organic’ and other labels on foods in supermarkets. For that reason, Ms. Matsumara does not buy any produce that comes from outside Japan. Correspondingly, she is concerned about Japan’s low rate of self-sufficiency, although given all of the household farming operations she knows about in Kashiwa and beyond, she’s a bit skeptical of the low, ‘<40%’ statistic.

The Matsumara’s kept piling fresh food into my arms!

The Matsumara family recognizes their privilege in being able to have access to so much fresh, wonderful food that they produce themselves. They have the financial resources to own enough land to house six large greenhouses. Furthermore, Mr. Matsumara has the time, physical ability, and technical experience to do all the farming, although his daughter worries about this in the upcoming years.

After visiting the Matsumara family, I got to see another form of hobby farming in Kashiwa—the Kashiwa ‘Citizens’ farm.’ Kashiwa’s ‘Citizens’ farm is relatively comparable to all the community gardens I recently visited in Budapest, where anybody can apply for a space to rent out land and farm whatever they please on that land. However, unlike the gardens I visited in Budapest, the management and ownership of Kashiwa’s Citizen Farm seems to be problem-free, likely to the Farm’s lack of a community mission, like the community gardens in Hungary. Furthermore, members of Kashiwa’s Citizen Garden must pay a considerably higher rental fee than garden members in Budapest, about 100 dollars a year instead of 1-10 dollars a year, and must provide their own tools and equipment. Regardless, community garden farmers worldwide must have the same surplus of free hours in a week to take care of their garden plots.

Kashiwa’s Citizen Farm

Compared to the community gardens I plan on visiting soon in Tokyo, however, Kashiwa’s Citizen Garden’s membership fee is a bargain. Renting a plot on Japan’s Sorado Farm Ebisu, a community garden which is located on the roof of the Ebisu train station, for example, costs over 150,000 yen a year for a 6 square-meter plots, which is over 15 times the price of a larger plot at Kashiwa’s Citizen Garden. I am curious to learn more about Tokyo’s Sorado Farms since I’m particularly interested in the contrast between Japanese youths’ declining interest in farming in peri-urban and rural areas versus growing trends or humatsu nogyo, or weekend farming, or how young people and families in cities are increasingly renting plots of land within and on the fringes of Tokyo to farm for fun.

Japan’s decreasing number of farmers, aging of the current farmer population, and decrease of land cultivated in significantly contrasts growing social movements of young people in cities wanting to grow their own food, better understand the local food system, and gain a physical connection to the natural environment. Can living just a few kilometers outside of Tokyo really make a difference in how much desire young people have to grow their own food? Are trends of ‘weekend farming’ enough to change any significant part of Tokyo’s food system? Furthermore, whether or not Japan’s low self-sufficiency rate poses a threat to its food security, does it reduce its citizens’ welfare in other ways?

There is clearly impending change in Tokyo’s food system—or at the least, its young people’s engagement in food production or understanding of where their food comes from. Today, Mr. Someya provided a nice pearl of wisdom. He said, to make change, there must be three types of people: young people, outsiders, and “crazy [passionate]” people. Young people must be there because they are the future. Outsiders must be there because they have an alternative perspective and understand the situation objectively. “Crazy” people must be there because only passion can drive people to invest the extensive resources necessary to make the change happen. And, Mr. Someya said, “I am the crazy person.”

Thank you so much to my guide and translator, Matsudi and Eri!!

During the past five weeks I’ve now been traveling, Blanche DuBois’ line “I’ve always been dependent on the kindness of strangers” has frequently popped into my head. While I am (hopefully) quite far from any mental hospital in Louisiana, I see some similarity between Blanche’s lack of touch with reality and my own ~loosened~ connection with the normalcy and routine of my thousands-of-mile-away life at Northwestern. Furthermore, I have been presented with incredible experience after experience in my travels, all due to the kindness, compassion, and passion of people I’ve never met before!

I happened upon one of these especially incredible experiences on my last designated research day in Hungary. But first, a secret: I scheduled most of my research meetings in Milan and Budapest by sending messages to email addresses on websites I found through Google searches and Facebook ‘Pages’ message inboxes. In Budapest, I connected with many community garden organizers through a list of community gardens on the website of Rosta Gabór’s NGO, Városi Kertek Egysület (VKE). Despite that I scheduled a meeting with Rosta a few days later, the link to that list of community gardens was in fact sent to me by a member of a Grundkert, one grassroots Budapest community garden. And I got in touch with Anna by messaging Grunkert’s Facebook Page and getting referred to her by the garden’s main coordinator, who doesn’t speak English.

Anyhow, what I didn’t realize when sending out ~50 messages to all the emails on the VKE website’s list of community gardens in Hungary a few weeks ago is that not all the gardens on the list are in Budapest. At first, I was bummed to turn down a few invitations to community gardens in cities that weren’t feasible for me to travel to during my time in Budapest. So, I was especially excited when I received a message from Irén, the Vice President of the Community Garden Association in Székesfehérvár. Irén welcomed me to visit two community gardens in Székesfehérvár, which is just an easy train ride from Budapest.[*]

I didn’t end up taking that train, however, since one of Irén’s daughters offered to drive me instead. Furthermore, rather than take the car ride by highway, Hajni offered to drive me and my friend visiting from Chicago along the scenic route, through the farms and sunflower fields of Northeast Hungary. As a wine expert, Hajni’s route also included a tour of the Etyek vineyards along the way. Something that would not have been nearly possible with public transportation. And notably, Etyek is fewer than 30 kilometers outside Budapest, so it satisfies my Budapest definition of “local food”!

One continuous excitement for me on this trip is how people’s interest in locally-grown food rarely ends after the crops’ growing stages. Rather, people like Irén are also passionate about cooking and eating local food, which serves (no pun intended) for wonderful experiences (mostly meals) beyond my interviews and community garden visits. In Irén’s first message back to me, she not only invited me to visit Székesfehérvár’s community gardens, but she also invited me to her home for lunch.

After an early departure from Budapest, we arrived in Székesfehérvár a bit after noon, just a few minutes late for the traditional, Hungarian lunch Irén prepared for us. We were welcomed into her home to meet the rest of the family members, and I was stunned by the beautiful plants placed throughout the home. Hajni had described to us the story of her mother’s three greenhouses during the car ride, but what I hadn’t previously considered the idea of one’s home acting as a greenhouse as well. Mostly just during the winter months, I was told!

Despite all the delicious food I’ve eaten in Hungary, it was such a treat to eat a home-cooked meal. It was an even more special treat to eat the most local-possible food in Irén’s home—she picked the majority of the vegetables in our meal from her garden that morning. Furthermore, a traditional Hungarian meal would not be complete without beverages, which in this case, included home-made cherry juice, pálinka, and wine. (Wine- and pálinka-making credits go to Irén’s husband.) And of course, dessert.

As large metropolitan areas, each of my study cities share certain key characteristics, such as having a high concentration of human and financial capital, advanced food supply chain infrastructures, social movements towards shorter food supply chains, and barriers to the development of those shorter food supply chains, which may be amplified by lack of political, corporate, or public support. There are some notable differences within these broad topics, for example, how the intensity of land development pressure within a city obstructs/interacts with urban farming developments. (Budapest has over 2800 hectares or > 3% unused space within the metropolitan area, which sets it apart from cities with extremely limited landscape and high rates of development, like Kampala and Singapore.) Nonetheless, my primary study cities this summer, each which has over a million inhabitant, are distinguished economic and cultural hubs, which may both prompt and inhibit local food system development and regeneration.

Székesfehérvár, a historically royal town of 100,000 people, doesn’t experience the exact same challenges regarding local food systems development that Budapest does. As Hungary’s 7^th largest city, it’s not nearly as much in the spotlight as Budapest regarding economic, land, and community development initiatives. Regardless, I thought visiting community gardens in Székesfehérvár would provide an ideal opportunity to better understand the incentives for creating and challenges and successes of community gardens that apply to larger and smaller urban areas.

Székesfehérvár’s two community gardens were founded four years ago by the city’s Community Garden Association in close concordance with the Local Council. In Budapest, I studied gardens created and led by NGOs, Local Councils representatives, and grassroots organizations (local community members). Across this range of management systems, I repeatedly learned about how challenging it is for garden leaders to maintain a functioning community garden, whose functions include providing a lively social environment, a community support system, and the proper resources to enable high-quality urban farming.

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The established management infrastructure of Székesfehérvár’s community gardens helps ensure that the city’s two community gardens maintain a dynamic, functional presence within the broader community of Székesfehérvár’s Community Garden Association, local schools, and adjacent neighborhoods. During my visit, I met with leaders of the Community Garden Association, garden supervisors, and the Local Council representative. Both gardens rely on the consistent dedication of these three different stakeholders to sustain the garden’s successes. Nonetheless, that isn’t to say being in a small city necessarily puts Székesfehérvár’s garden leaders at an advantage in how easy it is to dedicate their personal resources towards the gardens’ upkeep. For example, the supervisor at Palotavárosi Közösségi Kert told one thrilling story of her struggle while standing in the rain at one of the garden’s social events, soon after she’d moved into town. To her surprise, the garden members called upon herself—and herself only—to hold an umbrella over the pork fat frying on the fire beneath her. The umbrella eventually got caught in a gust of wind and was returned by a neighbor to the garden the next day, but by that time, the garden supervisor had already saved the day at the rainy garden party.

I’m currently grappling a bit as I analyze the various stories of challenges and success of community gardens that I visited in Budapest. I’ve observed one key, repeated challenge of how to maintain gardens’ community networks and lively social environments amidst people’s individualistic mindsets and habits and lack of free time and energy resources. NGO employees, local government representatives, and motivated community members have all earnestly described to me how many garden members simply show up to plant their own crops for their own benefit and do not partake in any community events. Many unpaid (and some paid) garden coordinators have also emphasized how much consistent effort is require to organize the social events and communication networks that a community garden needs to keep the ‘community’ in its title.

From my research in Budapest, I was inspired to learn how much power and potential individuals have in community and food systems development. I met one individual who lobbied seven Budapest districts governments to create community gardens, one intern who visited each of an NGO’s five community gardens once a week, many garden coordinators who organize robust garden social calendars, and so many other passionate individuals who work over hours or for free to maintain their gardens—what amounts to a small yet significant component of Budapest’s growing civil society and community development.

And fun surprise link here: http://www.kertbarik.hu/index.php/244-amerikai-vendegek-2

[*] I actually received two separate emails from each of Irén’s daughters—slightly differently translated versions of a warm welcome message to Székesfehérvár.

Before coming to Budapest, I chose to study the city’s growing network of community gardens to help answer my question of how local food systems—in this case, community gardens—can help contribute to food security. Given the broad range of individuals, local governments, NGOs involved in the creation and management of community gardens across the city, I specifically sought to better understand how different stakeholders can work together to create a resilient local food system. Then, during my first interview in Budapest, with an individual who personally founded seven of the current 26 community gardens in the city, I was explicitly told that community gardens are not part of the “food system” in Budapest. Disregarding later counterarguments to that statement I heard from other interviewees, my research on community gardens in Budapest provided key insight into the persisting challenge of how to sustain a community-based local food systems and the benefits and challenges of different forms of start-up leadership, financial support, and continuous management.

During my time in Budapest, I visited community gardens that were created and are managed by four different local stakeholders:

1)    Kortárs Építészeti Központ / Contemporary Agricultural Centre (KÉK) – KÉK defines itself as “an independent architectural cultural centre operated by young Hungarian architects, artists and civilians,” yet its work as a well-resourced, established NGO extends to many different sectors and projects within Budapest. It’s urban gardening program, established in 2012 has been developed with collaboration with five local governments, real estate companies, and other private companies, such as Telecom and the IBIS Aero hotel. There are currently two key KÉK employees plus one intern in charge of managing day-to-day activities plus ensuring continued funding and external support for of each of KÉK’s current five gardens. KÉK’s goal with its urban garden program is to be an important community space for its members as well as provide a learning experience for the broader Budapest community: KÉK hopes that based on its community gardens’ network, “methods, tools, desirable behaviours related to the sharing or circular economy can be disseminated.” They hope that the educational activities of these gardens will “contribute to the development of innovative, sustainable and inclusive economical and social environments on local level.” KÉK’s garden members pay a symbolic annual fee, and the gardens rely on KÉK’s continued access to external grants to remain financially viable. Furthermore, given KÉK’s dependence on outside sources for funding and land-use, some of their gardens may not be sustainable in the long run–two have already closed and one more is set to close this year. Yet KÉK still views the gardens no longer in operation as successes due to how they contributed to KÉK’s and other community stakeholders’ knowledge bases about how best to create a functional community garden and shared social space within Budapest.

Kerthatár Közösségi Kert

http://kek.org.hu/en/projekt/kertek/

2)    Városi Kertek Egyesület (VKE) – Rósta Gabor, founder of VKE, was first inspired to develop community gardens in Budapest from his own research on WWII U.S. Victory Gardens, which provided greater self-sufficiency to urban and suburban community members at home during World War II. While today, Gabor still views the gardens as a functional space for members to grow high quality food, he believes the gardens provide “mostly fun, mostly well-being. They contribute to people’s quality of life” more than food security. Gabor’s association, VKE, assists in the development of community gardens by guiding collaboration with local governments and district communities. VKE actively seeks out potential new garden locations and engages the municipal government and local community members. The local government then commissions VKE to construct the physical gardens and instigate community development; strengthening community relations is VKE’s current primary goal. Gabor is currently challenged to figure out how to make the transition easier after the first 1.5 years of a garden, when a garden’s leadership changes from that of VKE to the garden members themselves. Nonetheless, one of VKE’s gardens’ strengths is that they are embedded into the city’s infrastructure–they are “overlegal” in Gabor’s words–and thus experience minimal risk of displacement or discontinuation.

Első Kis-Pesti Kert

http://www.varosikertek.hu/

3)    Grundkert – A Grund, a grassroots community organization, established its first garden in Budapest’s 8th District in 2012. In the past five years, Grundkert has moved location twice (its current garden is called ‘Grundk3rt,’ correspondingly), and many of its members have changed; yet it’s still supported by its land-granting sponsor, FUTURA, and provides an active community space for its members to garden and socialize. Grundk3rt’s successes are notable given its location in the most dense, poorest district in Budapest. Furthermore, the community-organized garden upholds a very democratic structure and its leaders respond directly to its members needs. However, the garden coordinators do hold the large responsibility of organizing all garden events. Furthermore, the garden lacks a certain sense of cohesiveness; when I asked two garden members about Grundk3rt’s goal, they stated that they had recently had a meeting to discuss that, but they forgot what the conclusion was. Nonetheless, they both emphasized how the garden has enhanced its members livelihoods by providing them with a space to connect with nature, engage meaningfully with other community members, and expand their cultural awareness.

Grundk3rt

http://agrund.hu/

4)    District XI Municipal Council – Kelenkert, a garden in Budapest’s eleventh district, represents another way community gardens in Budapest are created—through direct collaboration between a local district council and the community. Yet despite Kelenkert’s community-based founding, the local counselor, Ludányi Attila, was integral to garnering community and government support for the project. In 2014, Attila noticed his district’s desire for more community activities and share social spaces. So, Attila created a community group, which brainstormed how they could develop a shared social space to foster the district’s community building. When the community group came up with the idea to start a community garden, the local council supported the idea, gave them the land, and gave them some money to cover initial startup costs. All yearly garden costs are covered by the membership fee, which is 2500 HUF (or about 10 USD) per year. Attila described that the garden’s two greatest challenges are maintaining a socially cohesive community along with meeting the garden’s budget. Right now, the garden’s community activities are contingent upon the volunteer efforts of one or two individual members. Furthermore, while the budget is tight, Attila has not considered raising the rent price for the members because the current price is “what [they] need”—in order to promote the garden as a welcoming, community space.

To sum of some key points of the rest of my research on community gardens here, a table….