Some Japanese take up weekend farming

Yohsuke and Kumiko Itoh, with their 5-year-old daughter, Fumi, at Mochida Farms. They say Fumi has begun eating vegetables since they got they began farming on the weekends. Photo by Kenji Hall, For The Times / December 5, 2010.

More city dwellers are renting plots of land in the city or in nearby rural areas, where they grow their own vegetables and fruit. Underlying the trend is the philosophy of jisan jisho, or ‘local food for local consumption.’

By Kenji Hall
Los Angeles Times
December 6, 2010

Excerpt:

The rise of the weekend farmers coincides with an urban agriculture craze that’s turning once-barren city rooftops and verandas into plush gardens.

Underlying the trend is the philosophy of jisan jisho. A Kyoto farm-rental company claims to have coined the phrase, often translated as “local food for local consumption,” which means to eat food that you grow yourself and has its roots in the local food movement.

One of the most influential books promoting part-time farming is Naoki Shiomi’s “Han No, Han X To lu Ikikata” (“Half Farmer, Half-X [Something Else Lifestyle]“). It details his decision to quit his job at an online retailer in the 1990s and divide his time between farming and environmental activism. Shiomi traces weekend farming to widespread food-safety concerns, following mad-cow disease outbreaks in Japan, the United States and Britain and the discovery in Japan of banned pesticides in dumplings from China.

“Most people are still interested in agriculture more from a food standpoint than as a life choice,” he says.

The urban farming boom is at odds with the plight of the country’s farmers. The sector has long suffered from high import tariffs, an outdated distribution system, and a lack of scale. Farms on this island nation average 4.7 acres, compared with 490 acres in the U.S.

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