Our 6 July Revitalising Rural Japan forum was an opportunity to introduce locals to Takadai meadows. Attended by approximately 80 people, who were mostly local farmers, curious citizens, former residents and also several non-Japanese who came up specially to see us in action. RidgeRunner Executive Director Sasaki Tadashi was first to speak, to welcome, connect with and reassure the farmers as to the farm’s intent. After introductions were made, some of the farmers took the opportunity to tour the vineyards by bus and get a run down on the current and future wine fields with Bruce Gutlove. Farmers talking to farmers in any language soon find a common bond.

A BBQ lunch with delicious local mountain vegetables, wine tasting of Coco farms 2006 Noumin Dry (Kerner & Muller Thurgau) and 2006 Kaze no Rouge (Zweigelt) washed down with natural local spring water and for some  a few cleansing ales. The Noumin Dry and Kaze no Rouge were selected as they are made from Hokkaido grapes and being late budders and early ripening grapes have been selected for Takadai plantings.  For some the wine was very drinkable and some guzzling instead of tasting took place. One particularly sad and lost red-headed soul was last reported face down behind the tractor.

Our first speaker was Yasunori Homma who talked macro trends, showed Japan’s future food self-sufficiency statistics, and his efforts as director of Homma Farms (see English and Japanese powerpoint here.

The most telling point from Homma’s speech was the low self sufficiency rate of Japanese food production and lack of successors for family farms. One visitor angrily suggested that Homma had no right to drop in from Tokyo to tell locals what to do and then stormed out.  The visitor woke a few of the audience from their post lunch drowsiness and sparked some good discussions. To put the record straight  Homma-san comes from a farming family, graduated with a degree in agriculture from Hokkaido University and hasn’t exactly parachuted in from Tokyo. In an interview with Oregon TV Homma-san said that feels he has a responsibility to Japan to do his best in even a small way to help Japanese farming.

Then Bruce Gutlove gave full details on how his winery, Coco Farms in Tochigi, Honshu, 90 minutes from Tokyo, started and stays in business. He presented his farm as a business model for revitalizing his local community, to avid attention from fellow farmers. See here for more information on Cocofarm.

Finally, well known author and Japanophile  Alex Kerr talked about the importance and efficacy of revitalizing Japan’s ruralities, and the wasted resources and potential–historically, culturally, and economically–that letting the farming areas depopulate, and indicated that Hokkaido in particular has unique potential. See here for more information on Alex and his activities.

This resonated, and the subsequent panel discussion was wall-to-wall questions, highly unusual for a Japanese audience. One question was on how to prevent depopulation of the countryside. Another tomato farmer asked us all what he could do to make his farm better known and his products more marketable. Inter alia, emcee Arudou’s advice was on giving press conferences to publicize the event, and Gutlove compared his marketing of grapes and alcohol to the regular crops industry.

The final comment was from another “newcomer” farmer like Homma, who felt that “native” farmers weren’t communicating well with “newcomers” who came in later to make a life of it after retirement. Emcee Arudou said that one of the duties of “native” farmers was to make “newcomer” farmers feel welcome (as opposed to heckling them), and recognise their contributions both in terms of population, taxes, and products. This includes the recent boom in non-Japanese investment in Niseko, and the mostly-foreign farmers working at Takadai Meadows–who were not merely investing money, but also their time, energies, and lives to work the land and make this area more productive. Arudou concluded with hope that this audience would cope and open up–after all, this event featured one native Japanese and three non-native Japanese speakers, unthinkable elsewhere in Japan, yet attendees were very accepting.

RidgeRunner’s Sasaki had the last word, giving an animated five minutes on how we have to ignore nationality and origin, and let people come in and contribute, or else the community is doomed. The event closed with rousing applause, with people apparently feeling reassured about Takadai’s intentions, and realizing that Tadadai is here to stay and contribute.