Making the Connections: From Farm to Table

A talk with Chuck Kayser, founder of Midori Farm

By Chris Summerville

 

Chris Summerville has been teaching about Sustainability and Environmental Education at Japanese universities for thirty years. He lives on the shores of Lake Biwa with his family and loves bicycling, camping, and actively trying to share his ideas on learning from Japan’s past to help move towards a more community-based and spiritually ecological future paradigm.

For most visitors to Kyoto, one of the joys of exploring this ancient capital, along with visiting the many temples and shrines, is discovering its food culture, known as ‘Kyo-ryori.’ The offerings of the thousands of tiny local restaurants on every side street have become even more accessible in recent years. Tempting English menus welcome visitors to join the locals who, along with the ‘master’ of the establishment, are often happy to share their recommendations. 

Hailing from England, a country not known for its gourmet offerings to global cuisine, I have always loved how my (Japanese) wife’s homecooked food constantly changes with the season – refreshing cold soba in summer, sweet potato tempura as the autumn nip comes into the air and tummy warming oden and nabe in winter, are just a few examples.

But where does the food come from, how is it grown, and who grows it? Japan, an island nation long cut off from the outside world, has had an equally long history of consuming locally grown, organic and seasonal vegetables, fruits and fish and, until the 1960s, was 79% food self-sufficient.

Visitors will still notice lovingly tended small vegetable plots and rice fields everywhere, and it remains commonplace for grandparents to send boxes of just-harvested food to their city-dwelling children or grandchildren. Identifying which prefecture is famous for a certain vegetable, fruit, rice, tea or sake is part of everyday conversation, and each train station sells its elaborate local ‘bento’ (boxed lunches) known as ‘ekiben,’ filled with seasonal produce and specialties.

However, much has changed in the past sixty years, and now Japan’s food self-sufficiency rate is just 37% and 65% of its farmers are over 65 years of age. This has resulted in individually owned farms decreasing by a third in just the past decade, while corporate farms, often specializing in a single crop, have increased by 240%. Japan now ranks 9th in the world by weight in its use of pesticides yet has one of the smallest land areas, meaning its contamination is significantly more concentrated.

So what is the solution to these problems even as the number of abandoned fields increases year by year? For Chuck Kayser, founder of Midori Farm, the answer is to revive farmland and rural areas through organic farming: and Chuck has been ‘planting the seeds’ of this message for over a decade. Located in Kutsuki, a tiny village set in the mountains of Shiga, the farm is just one hour north of Kyoto. Midori Farm’s mission statement reads: ‘We are striving to bring back the traditional food system to restore the health and environment of Japan by introducing modern methods of sustainable agriculture alongside the tried-and true techniques that the resident farmers have used for generations.’

Despite the hard work this entails, the farm’s website shows what joy being in such rural surroundings in a traditional Japanese village has brought to hundreds of people of all ages and ethnicities.

Of course, rural life was like this in Japan for a millennium up to the 1950s: the community worked together planting, maintaining and harvesting the fields, deeply knowledgeable about and respectful of their surroundings.

This wisdom of both nature’s gifts and its threats was passed on from generation to generation in a form of agricultural practice known as ‘satoyama,’ meaning a place where mountains give way to flatlands and where nature and people exist in harmony.

Sadly, the holistic satoyama approach is currently in the minority: certified organic produce only accounts for 0.23% of Japan’s food products, and 85% of farmers are engaged in occupations outside farming, earning most of their income from non-farming activities.

So, how can both tourists as well as residents join in this revival of Japan’s food culture? For those with limited time, Chuck encourages you to ‘Come up to the farm for a tour, enjoy the nature, and interact with our veggies’! Also, travelers may volunteer in exchange for accommodation and food, organized through Workaway during the season (March-December).

Frequent events both on-farm and in Kyoto city welcome individuals and families to participate in farm days, campouts, cooking workshops, and speaker and music nights. Finally, for Kyoto residents, why not treat yourself to a regular box of Midori Farm’s delicious vegetables delivered to your door by Chuck himself on his way back home from his farming day? This is known as the ‘teikei’ (cooperation) system, where consumers purchase food directly from farmers, and is associated with the slogan ‘food with the farmer’s face on it.’

Discover more on Midori Farm’s website, Facebook and Instagram. And for short-term visitors, just as international tourism has revived the Japanese pride in all aspects their culture largely lost in the race to Westernize, try seeking out the small, locally owned restaurants serving ‘Kyo-ryori’ or look for the organic label when you shop, and then sit back and enjoy!