The beginning of the farm

Why did you decide to pursue agriculture?

I was influenced by my maternal grandfather, who was a farmer in Saku, Nagano. He was a peach farmer, but he also produced rice and vegetables, and as a child, I lived there during summer vacation and helped with farm work. I didn't like farm work, though. When I was in junior high school, I collapsed during a physical education class and was found to have an irregular heartbeat. Since then, I have been going to the hospital every month and taking medication. I was passionate about baseball, so in the summer I would sometimes collapse from overtraining, and the doctor once told me, "If you push yourself too hard, you'll die." When I was in my third year of high school, I read Ryotaro Shiba's "Ryoma Goes" and was drawn to the word "destiny." It said, "A person dies when their mission is fulfilled. Don't be afraid of dying, and do what you must do." I was seriously thinking about life and death at the time, so it really resonated with me. I strongly felt that it was more important to find what I should be doing and work hard at it than to be afraid of dying. It was around the time of university entrance exams, but I didn't like the trend around me where people prioritized the name of the university over what they would study. I also liked cooking, so I considered going into the culinary field. It was around that time that I read an article about famine in a magazine. Before even thinking about eating delicious food or wanting others to eat, there were so many people dying because they had nothing to eat. With the thought of "Why?", I started thinking about what I could do, and that's when my grandfather's farming came to mind. I decided to go into agriculture and entered the Faculty of Agriculture at Meiji University. My parents were surprised. "Why?" they asked. When you talk about getting involved with famine through agriculture, you usually imagine working in agriculture overseas, right? When I graduated from university, I also looked into things like the Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers. Even though I graduated from the Faculty of Agriculture, I knew better than anyone that I had no practical experience in agriculture, and to begin with, I didn't study much, so I lacked knowledge. I knew I couldn't do anything even if I went abroad. I knew I needed to acquire skills to be useful. However, at that time there weren't any agricultural companies like there are now, so I wondered how I could get involved in agriculture. By chance, I met the president of a restaurant chain, and he invited me to join him, saying, "I'm going to start a farm in the future, so why don't you come work for me?" I decided to join the company. At first, I was in charge of recruitment and training, but five years later I transferred to an agricultural production corporation, where I worked for two and a half years before becoming independent in 2010. I'm involved in agriculture domestically, but I haven't given up on addressing the hunger problem. Agriculture (especially organic agriculture) can thrive in Japan, which has a hot and humid climate, limited arable land, and many pests and diseases, because of its high level of technology. By taking that technology overseas, we can increase agricultural production. However, I believe now is the time for me to accumulate those skills myself.

Starting a farm, but facing challenges...

When I became independent, I rented a 1.6-hectare field to start with about 10 different kinds of vegetables. It was a series of failures. At my previous company, my work was mainly desk-based, thinking about things like how to create a profit structure. I did go out to the fields, but I mostly planned things out in my head. I was able to make improvements to some extent, so I thought I could manage with that method even after becoming independent. But when I actually tried it myself, it wasn't that simple. It's difficult to balance production and sales, and even if you produce, you can't sell it. No matter how delicious, safe, and secure you say the vegetables grown by an amateur are, nobody will buy them because they have no credibility. For the first year or two, I crushed all the unsold vegetables with a tractor. When I became independent, I borrowed 20 million yen as operating capital, but it was gone in no time. I was barely able to pay my employees' salaries, so I gathered up consulting work that I was doing in addition to farming to just barely make ends meet. That's why I seriously considered "how to make vegetables sell." At first, I was doing what I had done at my previous company. The biggest challenge for farmers is how much they can reduce logistics costs. To achieve that, it is necessary to narrow down the products produced and increase production volume. However, the scale and capital were completely different from my previous company. As a privately owned farm, we couldn't produce that much, nor did we have a market to sell it to, so it was ultimately an impossible request. We were desperate to think of a way that only we could do. We kept getting rejected when we tried to sell our products, but after writing many handwritten sales letters, we met the owner of a restaurant company. From then on, things gradually started to improve. Of course, the hardships continued after that. Because I had started with unfounded confidence, I had a strong feeling of "this wasn't supposed to happen." I was at the height of self-loathing. I lost so much weight that someone even told me, "You must have cancer." In 2014, we were hit by a heavy snowstorm, and all our agricultural facilities, including the greenhouses for seedling cultivation and the work sheds, were destroyed. At the time, I thought, "This is a good excuse to quit." To be honest, I wanted to run away from farming. I got scolded, though. By the employees who had supported the company with me, and by the local farmers who had helped us when we started up. They said, "There are so many people who want to work but can't because they're unwell, and yet you're so healthy and still have so many chances, and you're going to quit over something like this?" I was able to earn money through jobs other than farming, so I had become complacent with that. It was only after being scolded that I finally decided to commit to living as a farmer.

Days as a farmer

In agriculture, there's no concept of Sundays or holidays. We're dealing with living things, so we can't adjust to our schedules. We have to get up incredibly early, sometimes before 4 AM in the summer. But it's fun to be able to do things the way I like, surrounded by so many living things under the wide open sky. It's rewarding when customers enjoy eating the vegetables I grow. When they say, "These vegetables are delicious," it's a great comfort and motivates me. Most farmers ship their produce to agricultural cooperatives and that's the end of it, but we can see the faces of our customers. We get direct feedback. That's what makes it possible. We don't use any pesticides. Our vegetables may have insect damage, but our customers understand. Modern agriculture, which uses pesticides and chemical fertilizers, is all about eliminating diseases and insects, but now diseases and insects develop resistance, making the chemicals less effective. We believe in coexisting with insects and other living things. We need to create places where insects and other creatures can live. Grass is the best way to do that. There are pests and diseases, but there are also insects that are natural enemies of them, and creatures that eat them. Our job is to establish such ecosystems around the fields. That's why, unlike conventional agriculture, we cultivate while leaving as many weeds as possible. Recently, there are cultivation methods that don't use any soil at all, like growing vegetables in factories, but soil is indispensable to our vegetable cultivation. This is because we believe that the work of insects, small animals, and microorganisms in the soil has various effects on the growth of vegetables. There is still a lot we don't know about the soil, especially about microorganisms. That's why we believe it's important to carefully observe the crops and the surrounding conditions, and to cultivate while imagining things that we don't yet know. Every vegetable has the power to grow on its own. If you can just provide the minimum necessary growing environment, vegetables will grow on their own. However, you shouldn't provide too much, and finding that balance is very difficult. Vegetables that grow well by overcoming various difficulties such as high temperatures and droughts become vegetables with a rich flavor and aroma. There are some things that are similar to humans, aren't there?

The future of farms

It is said that if the current trend of decline continues, the number of farmers in Japan (core agricultural workers) will fall to 10,000 in 20 years. Since the majority of farmers are elderly, it is easy to imagine that they will no longer be able to manage their farmland. In Kobuchizawa, everyone growing rice is over 80 years old. Their sons will not take over. Uncultivated land will increase and become neglected. Once that happens, the fields will not recover easily. Someone has to do something to continue farming and protect it. I am determined to be that person. However, I can only manage a little over 5 hectares of land on my own. I have no intention of significantly expanding the scale of my farm in the future. Rather, I think it would be better to increase the number of like-minded people or to train young trainees who are attracted to agriculture and help them become independent. I hope to expand my network by purchasing and selling vegetables produced by these friends. Vegetables are a product with large price fluctuations, but I have an annual contract so that they always buy them at the same price. Therefore, if we can produce steadily, we can increase sales systematically. In order to produce vegetables stably, we are committed to shipping them in season, which is ideal for growing them. They are delicious, nutritious, and allow our customers to feel the changing seasons. Another factor in producing vegetables stably is the variety of crops we cultivate. Narrowing down the number of crops would increase production efficiency, but it would also increase the chances of success or failure due to weather risks. That's why we cultivate multiple crops to balance production volume. Thanks to this, our finances have improved, and we have been able to pay off our initial debts. What can I do to protect Japanese agriculture? I believe it is to convey the appeal of agriculture to young people and create an environment where highly motivated individuals can aspire to work in agriculture. However, finding the answer to how to get young people interested in agriculture is very difficult.