Uncanny Terrain: Rio+20: Four Fukushima Farmers 福島：その土地に残る意味

Uncanny Terrain:

This video, capturing the diverse views of four Fukushima activist farmers, screens beginning June 16 in the Rio+20 United Nations Sustainable Development Conference, where one of the main subjects of the documentary Uncanny Terrain, Seiji Sugeno, director of the Fukushima Organic Farmers Network, is presenting.

Food Inc. Director Robert Kenner To Visit Tokyo (May 19 & 21) & Osaka (May 22)

Via  the Consumers Union of Japan:

CUJ is glad to be able to invite US documentary director Robert Kenner to Japan. His film Food Inc. is a great exposure of the way the food industry and especially Monsanto have hijacked farming and food processing, creating a situation where it is almost impossible for consumers to know what we are eating. While the focus is on the US agribusiness, it also applies to practices in many other countries, and the frequent abuse against farmers, food factory workers, animals and the biodiversity on our planet.

Robert Kenner is an Emmy-Award winning film maker. He will participate at three screening events and give talks while in Japan. Everyone is welcome!

Tokyo: May 19 (Sat) 13:30-18:00

Tokyo Women’s Plaza (Omotesando station)

http://www.tokyo-womens-plaza.metro.tokyo.jp/

Entrance Fee: 1,000 Yen

Tokyo: May 21 (Mon) 14:00-16:00

House of Representatives 2nd Bldg, Multi-purpose Hall (1st Floor)

(衆議院第2議員会館 1階 多目的ホール)

Entrance Fee: Free

Osaka: May 22 (Tue) 13:30-17:30

Osaka International House Center

http://www.ih-osaka.or.jp/english/

Entrance Fee: 1,000 Yen

More on Food Inc. from the film's website:

In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation's food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government's regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, herbicide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won't go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli—the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.

Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield's Gary Hirshberg and Polyface Farms' Joel Salatin, Food, Inc. reveals surprising—and often shocking truths—about what we eat, how it's produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.

Voices & Spring Love Harukaze Explore 3.11 Issues @ Tokyo this weekend

It has been slightly over one year since the tragedy of 3.11. Two Tokyo events scheduled for this weekend will highlight ongoing themes of critical importance, such as reconstruction efforts in the Tohoku area and health concerns following the Fukushima nuclear accident. Both events will also raise awareness while featuring various music and arts performances, workshops, and much more.

The first event, Voices, will be held all day this Saturday, March 31st, in Tokyo's Shibaura district. It is a collaboration between the Namida Project—a non-profit, multicultural grassroots effort whose aim is to help empower people to turn tears of sadness into tears of joy—and the community event space Shibaura House. According to the event website:

VOICES is a gathering of narratives, ideas, knowledge, experiences, opinions and expressions that have grown out of the 3.11 disasters in Japan. In the unique open and inviting spaces of SHIBAURA HOUSE, join workshops, participate in talk sessions, listen to stories, view exhibitions and enjoy music as you reflect on and discuss what has happened over the past year and what should be done to create safe and sustainable communities.

The design of SHIBAURA HOUSE erases the inside/outside, us/them boundaries and brings everyone together in a warm space that offers us a chance to meet and share, and to open our imaginations to other possibilities.

In the evening there will be a special charity concert. It will feature renowned musician and composer Akira Inoue. He will be accompanied by shakuhachi performers, led by Ryozan Sakata, Grand Master of Tozanryu, and including Junya Ohkouchi, Kizan Kawamura and Keiko Higuchi. Guitarist Haruo Kubota and flutist Miya will also join Akira Inoue to create a wonderful windscape of sounds.

We hope you can join us on March 31st and help make VOICES a very special event.

Namida Project is a non-profit, multicultural grassroots effort. Our aim is to help empower people so we can turn «tears of sadness to tears of joy».

EVENT LIST

TALK SESSION 1 // 10:00-12:00
Voices of Health
TALK SESSION 2 // 13:00-15:00
Voices of Fukushima
TALK SESSION 3 // 16:30-18:30
Voices of the People

DOCUMENTARY &
DIRECTOR´S TALK // 11:00 - 12:00

PERFORMANCE // 15:15-16:00
Contellusion

PERFORMANCES // 10:00 -18:30
Accumulating Voices

WORKSHOPS
Take Action Workshop // 10:00-12:00
Improvisational Game Workshop // 13:15-14:45
Connecting through badge-making // 16:00-18:00

PRESENTATION
Video Voices // 10:00-18:30

ART EXHIBITION
Voices of Kiri-e // 10:00-18:30

PERFORMANCES
Accumulating Voices // 10:00-18:30

WORKSHOP
I am here! // 10:00-18:30

DISPLAYS
Kids Voice // Shadowlands 10:00-18:30

BOOKSHOP 　10:00-18:30

FOOD SALES 10:00-18:30
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CHARITY CONCERT // Windscape 19:30-21:00

Among the day's events are a screening of Then and Now, an exquisitely filmed, brilliantly nuanced short film featuring interviews with Ishinomaki residents about issues that continue facing their community nearly one year following the March tsunami devastation. Following the film will be a talk with its director, Paul Richard Johannessen, and Ishinomaki community leader Toshihiko Fujita.

Then and Now from Paul Johannessen on Vimeo.

For detailed information in English and Japanese about all event sessions, as well as tickets and registration, see the official event website.

The second event, "Harukaze 2012: Think It!" will also be held this coming weekend, Saturday March 31st and Sunday April 1st, amongst the budding cherry blossoms in Tokyo's Yoyogi Park. The event will feature live music, DJs, an organic market, live painting, and talk sessions featuring speakers on sustainability-related issues, including Gota Matsumura from the grassroots reconstruction project Ishinomaki 2.0.

From the event website:

HARUKAZE: Think it !
Date/Time:
 Saturday, March 31st (noon to sunset)
and Sunday, April 1st (11AM to 8PM)
Venue: 
Yoyogi Park (Outdoor Stage area)* Rain or shine!!
Admission: Free!! (Donations kindly accepted)

Event will feature:

* Three stages (Spring stage, Love stage and Peace Dome)
* The Unnamed Parade
* Skate Ramp powered by Buena Suerte
* Kids activity area
* NPO/NGO booths
* Spring Love Market
* Food/drink stalls featuring healthy/organic ingredients
* Chillout Flea Market
* Talk session on sustainability-related issues
* AND MORE!

The legendary free urban party, Harukaze, is back for its fourth year. This　year’s event will be held on Saturday, March 31st and Sunday, April 1st in Tokyo’s Yoyogi Park. If our streak of luck continues this year, the weekend will again feature the cherry blossoms at their full peak!

Enjoyed by many event-goers during its first run from 1998-2002, the festival returned in 2009 together with Peace Not War Japan as “Harukaze Spring Love.” Discussions on issues related to peace were added to the lineup that year and the next, and donations were also collected for grassroots peace organizations. Following the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake last March, the 2011 event included a candlelight memorial and song tributes for disaster victims from the amazing VOJA (Voices of Japan) led by gospel singer (and festival director) Yuka Kamebuchi, as well as panel discussions on issues related to nuclear power and alternative energy.

The 2012 Harukaze event is titled “Think It!”, and will encourage festival-goers to consider issues from alternative cultural perspectives such as where we have been and where we are headed in our world today. The amazing weekend exthttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifravaganza will again feature top-rated musical and dance performances, organic food and goods stalls, speakers on sustainability-related issues, and much more. Come out with your family, friends, or on your own to enjoy the cherry blossoms while feeding your mind and soul with some Spring Love!!

For more information, see the official event website.

For highlights from past events, see these articles from 2011, 2010 and 2009.

Why not make a weekend of it and attend both events!!

The Economics of Happiness: Locally Based Alternatives to the Global Consumer Culture

Many thanks to Anja Light for the head's up on this documentary, website (English, German, Italian and Japanese), and conference (this weekend in Berkeley): The Economics of Happiness:

Economic globalization has led to a massive expansion in the scale and power of big business and banking. It has also worsened nearly every problem we face: fundamentalism and ethnic conflict; climate chaos and species extinction; financial instability and unemployment. There are personal costs too. For the majority of people on the planet, life is becoming increasingly stressful. We have less time for friends and family and we face mounting pressures at work.

The Economics of Happiness describes a world moving simultaneously in two opposing directions. On the one hand, an unholy alliance of governments and big business continues to promote globalization and the consolidation of corporate power. At the same time, people all over the world are resisting those policies, demanding a re-regulation of trade and finance—and, far from the old institutions of power, they’re starting to forge a very different future. Communities are coming together to re-build more human scale, ecological economies based on a new paradigm – an economics of localization.

The film shows how globalization breeds cultural self-rejection, competition and divisiveness; how it structurally promotes the growth of slums and urban sprawl; how it is decimating democracy. We learn about the obscene waste that results from trade for the sake of trade: apples sent from the UK to South Africa to be washed and waxed, then shipped back to British supermarkets; tuna caught off the coast of America, flown to Japan to be processed, then flown back to the US. We hear about the suicides of Indian farmers; about the demise of land-based cultures in every corner of the world.

The second half of The Economics of Happiness provides not only inspiration, but practical solutions. Arguing that economic localization is a strategic solution multiplier that can solve our most serious problems, the film spells out the policy changes needed to enable local businesses to survive and prosper. We are introduced to community initiatives that are moving the localization agenda forward, including urban gardens in Detroit, Michigan and the Transition Town movement in Totnes, UK. We see the benefits of an expanding local food movement that is restoring biological diversity, communities and local economies worldwide. And we are introduced to Via Campesina, the largest social movement in the world, with more than 400 million members.

We hear from a chorus of voices from six continents, including Vandana Shiva, Bill McKibben, David Korten, Samdhong Rinpoche, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Michael Shuman, Zac Goldsmith and Keibo Oiwa. They tell us that climate change and peak oil give us little choice: we need to localize, to bring the economy home. The good news is that as we move in this direction we will begin not only to heal the earth but also to restore our own sense of well-being. The Economics of Happiness challenges us to restore our faith in humanity, challenges us to believe that it is possible to build a better world.

Popcorn Homestead: Early Spring Farmers' Markets in Tokyo

Kichijoji's Earth Day Market. (Photo: Eco-Waza)
Via Kurushii via Joan Bailey's Popcorn Homestead, comprehensive list of farmers' markets in Tokyo this month, including Omote-sando's Gyre Market and Kichijoji's new Earth Day Market in dreamy Inokashira-koen.

More on the Kichijoji market (all organic, all fair trade) in Inokashira Koen at the latest post at Popcorn Homestead:

Many of our usual favorite vendors were there - Cocira with her most excellent bamboo charcoal cleaning product, BioFarm with the usual selection of beautiful greens and the scrumptious roasted potatoes pictured above, Kitagawen with their lovely organic teas, and Miyamotoyama with their mouth-watering homemade mochi, miso, and natto - along with a bundle of new folks selling everything from plants and seeds to jewelry, jams, an assortment of grains, vinegars, miso and shitake, along with jewelry and yarn.

Japanese Farmers: “We will continue farming on Japanese soil!”

(2011 Peace Walk from Tokyo to Hiroshima: "Every year, NOUMINREN participates in Peace Walk that starts from Tokyo to Hiroshima. This year‘s walk was very special. In the opening ceremony, Fukushima NOUMINREN member, Hiroshi Miura, spoke. He said, 'My rice fields are 11 km away from the power plants, so I won’t be able to grow rice in my fields anymore in my life. This accident proved that nuclear power plants and human beings cannot coexist. I am committed to continue life-growing farming in a new place and continue making efforts to eliminate the nuclear power plants one by one!' He joined the march and called for abolition of nuclear arsenals and the change in energy policy. Photo: NOUMINREN)

Nouminren (Japan Family Farmer Movement), represents one of thousands of NGOs in Japanese civil society committed to the visionary integration of the best of traditional and postwar Japanese values: simplicity, sustainable agriculture, preservation of local culture and communities, democratic society, constitutional (Article 9) commitment to nonviolent solutions to international conflict, gender equality, human rights, nuclear weapons and energy abolition, environmental protection, and social justice.

Under siege by the nuclear fallout of 3/11 and the threat of the possible TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership "free trade") agreement that would allow heavily subsidized, factory-farmed, genetically engineered, chemically (toxic herbicides and pesticides) treated, cheap foreign food products to flood Japanese markets, thereby threatening the position of high-quality, labor-intensive, organic, locally grown, therefore more expensive Japanese heirloom food products), Nouminren issued this statement via Via Campesina:

“We will continue farming on Japanese soil!”
Tuesday, 28 February 2012

NOUMINREN Youth held its 20th conference in Tokyo on February 11th and 12th this year. Approximately 100 people participated in the conference (the largest ever). For NOUMINREN, this conference was probably its most important in last 20 years as it was the first conference after 3.11 earthquake, tsunami and the nuclear plant accidents. All participants were eager to share and reflect on what they underwent after 3.11 and to use these understandings to overcome their concerns.

On the first day, a forum was held to discuss the issue, "Why we must continue farming on Japanese soil: Understanding how nuclear power plants and the Trans-Pacific Partnership might to destroy us."

In this forum, five panelists (three farmers, one food researcher, and one local community activist) presented their commitment to protect agriculture and food sovereignty of Japan.

The first panelist, Souhei Miura, reported that after the disaster and nuclear power plant accident, he evacuated to Chiba prefecture. However, he decided to go back to Fukushima to farm again. He said, “It is possible to produce safe food in Fukushima if we continue doing the checkups. Nuclear power plant accidents can happen anywhere in the world today, so why don’t I stay and farm in Fukushima, the prefecture I love the most.” This commitment moved many in the audience.

The second panelist, Sumito Hatta, the Director in Chief of the NOUMINREN Food Research Laboratory, discussed its role. He explained that the laboratory’s role is to use scientific methods to enhance the safety of agricultural products and to strengthen the fiduciary relation between producers and consumers. “This is how we can contribute to Japanese agriculture,” Sumito Hatta said.

He also stated that TPP is trying to deregulate the mandatory labeling rule for GM food. “We want to make a new project checking up GM food and the GM rape seeds that falls from shipping trucks. He also explained about the role of the radioactive detector purchased with donations from the people from Japan and the world. He emphasized the importance of sharing all data with everyone who needs it.

The third panelist, Noriyuki Takahashi, a young farmer from Wakayama prefecture, explained why he was such a strong supporter of making soil. He explained that because he wanted to produce delicious and safe crops, he realized the importance of making soil and bokashi (organic fermented fertilizer). He also described how he uses the dumped food from supermarkets to make fertilizer. In concluding, Noriyuki Takahashi stated that “Friendship between living things and soil is important. I am pursuing the farming technique that makes not only human, but every living thing happy.”

The fourth panelist, Ken Aizawa, a farmer from a heavy-snowy mountainous area of Niigata prefecture explained how much he enjoyed farming in such difficult conditions. He said that it takes 2 to 3 times more effort to do weeding on his farm and the results from harvesting are also low. However as Ken Aizawa also pointed out, in such mountainous areas, people are very bonded and he wants the bond to continue. He concluded that consumers buying domestic products will unite cities and rural areas.

The fifth panelist, Shinya Takeda, a staff member of international bureau of NOUMINREN and an organizer of Toke Saturday Market (street artist market) in Chiba prefecture explained why consumers should take a strong interest in agriculture He said there were three main reasons why consumers should support the farmers: (1) because food is essential for humans, (2) because local agriculture is essential for the economy of rural areas, and (3) because sustainable agriculture is essential for keeping the beauty and value of the rural landscape and stopping climate change. He concluded that farming is the most basic human activity, and therefore, “We, both producers and consumers should always respect it”.

After the presentations, the conference participants were divided into 10 groups and had 90-minute group discussion. The members of the groups were a mix of farmers, distributors, consumers, and NOUMINREN secretariats.

Each had a different story to share about the threat of TPP and radioactivity to our food safety.

One of the farmers said that since the accident, he has had a hard time to confidently tell the consumers that his crops are safe to eat, and so he has lost his motivation to grow. A shiitake mushroom farmer from Tako, Chiba prefecture, also shared that he is worried that radiation may be detected in his mushrooms that he planted after the accident. He explained that the direct sale to shops in his town dropped by one-third. A rice farmer from Ibaragi prefecture said that although he grows rice, he is hesitant to give the rice to his newborn baby. A vegetable farmer in Fukushima said that he feels relieved being outside of Fukushima because he does not have to hear all the discussions about radioactivity on the radio.

All the stories were something that would never have been expected when last year’s conference was held. All participants realized that they went through a really tough situation and are still facing it.

In the reception following the panel discussion, the participants talked about their concerns to continue farming and their future dreams. By talking to the people in the same generation, the participants’ dreams prevailed over their concerns and made the conference very happy and energetic to the end, and actually becoming stronger after the conference.

Earthquake, tsunami, typhoon, and radioactive crisis have hit us, and sooner or later a volcano will erupt as some of the scholars predict. But we, the NOUMINREN youth, will continue farming on Japanese soil.

Junko Edahiro: "Representative, Half Farmer, Half X Institute"

Junko Edahiro: "Representative, Half Farmer, Half X Institute":

I think that being a Half Farmer, Half X is doable in Tokyo, New York, or Berlin. There are some people who say that "we should limit being a Half Farmer, Half X to people living in rural areas," but this will only result in the same structure of the city versus the suburbs, by which we are so burdened.

Rather, people should do what they can, be it balcony gardening or rooftop gardening, in places they love. Setting loose rules, such as committing 30 or 40 minutes a day to handling soil and plants will enable more people to start farming more easily. I think many people feel that starting farming is too much of a challenge, so how low you can set the bar is the key. Some people will choose to go deeper, or some may choose to just spread the word. We can all play different roles.

Rice Field in Asuka

Rice field in Asuka, a region in the Nara Basin, that flourished as Japan's first capital at the end of the sixth century. (Photo: JD) 

Poems in the Manyoshu (Collection of Myriad Leaves)—a vast anthology of Japanese poetry compiled in the eighth century—extol Asuka's exquisite natural landscape of hills, small misty mountains, orchards, farms, and the winding Asuka River. The historical landscape is equally mesmerizing: ancient tombs, stone relics, palace (modest wooden buildings) ruins, and the oldest Buddhist temple in Japan.

The Asuka Historical Museum:

Asuka, some 1300 and more years ago, was home to Japan's ruling dynasty and was thus, for more than a century, the capital of the country. It was at this time that our country adopted much of the relatively matured culture and administrative methodology of China and the Korean peninsula, and it was here that a unified national state was for the first time established in Japan.

PM Noda did not enter into TPP negotiations

(A Via Campesina (family farmer cross-border network) conference convened in Chiba, Japan earlier in the fall to address the TPP threat to small farmers in Japan and other Asian countries)

Many thanks to Martin Frid at Kurushii for his nuanced and sensitive analysis of PM Noda's ambiguous ("To join or not to join") remarks re whether the Japanese government will or won't enter into Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations.

Headlines in the North American media made much ado about nothing: giving the impression that Noda had announced that Japan had formally joined the TPP talks. Martin's post quotes a variety of sources, rendering a multi-dimensional picture from Japanese (and other Asian) perspectives

Asahi Shinbun had somewhat better coverage of the TPP debacle. They quoted coalition partner Shizuka Kamei of the People's New Party, who has experience as a trade negotiator, and is against the TPP:

The TPP concept originated from trade rules established by Singapore and other small countries. The United States is seeking to use them to govern the Pacific Rim free trade zone. If Japan gets involved in TPP rulemaking, it would amount to being unfair to China, South Korea and Indonesia, which are all major trading partners for Japan and not parties to the TPP regime.

Asahi also had this analysis of how difficult it might be for Japan to get serious about negotiations, as different ministries are responsible for different sectors of talks, with opposite goals...

My conclusion is that Noda's announcement, for whatever it is worth, amounts to little of substance. This is how opponents of TPP look at it, according to Asahi's analysis:

DPJ members opposed to Japan's participation in the TPP negotiations watched Noda's televised news conference at a room in the Diet. "I was relieved," said Masahiko Yamada, former agriculture minister who is a staunch opponent of the TPP. "(Noda) did not go as far as to announce Japan's participation in the TPP talks, but stopped at entering consultations."

The archipelago's traditional culture of family farms is a starting point for Japan's transition into a sustainable future. Localized food production on small farms (the only energy-efficient method of food production) is an essential strategy to slow climate change and protect our natural environment and biodiversity.

Among food and climate change experts are calling for the localization of food production. Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, an advocate for sustainable, small-scale agriculture ("Agroecology"), explains:

International trade only concerns nine to 10 percent of the food that is produced globally, yet it has had decisive influence on the way decisions are made on the way infrastructure develops and on how farmers are being supported...

Governments have generally supported export-led agriculture, supported global supply chains, and under-invested in local and regional markets.

Instead of going backwards (shutting down family farms and increasing imports of fossil-fuel intensive, emissions-based, GMO, pesticide-laden food products—that must be transported over long distances—from state-subsidized industrial factory farms and plantations), the Japanese government would be undertaking a domestic and global public service if it would further support and share its countrypeople's ethos of simplicity, sustainability and food security with the world.

Japan's 99%: 11,668,809 (so far) Signatures Against Joining TTP "Free Trade" Agreement (a preventable "Fourth Disaster" that would destroy Japan)

Many thanks to Martin Frid at Kurushii for a sensitive compilation/analysis of the Japanese citizenry's decision on the radically neoliberal Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) "free trade" agreement:

Japanese farmers protest the TPP. (Photo: NHK World)
You may not know it, but Japanese people are very vocal and very outspoken. They protest a lot! Foreign media usually does not bother to cover activism in this part of the world. The current protests here in Japan against the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a case in point.

Over 11 million Japanese people have signed a petition against TPP. They realize that "free" trade is nothing but a massive assault that will force impossible conditions on their livelihoods. What is so "free" about that?

It could be called the fourth disaster to strike in 2011, after the March 11 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in Fukushima.

Joining TPP negotiations to eliminate 90% of agricultural tariffs would make it impossible to live in rural Japan.

TPP might lead to a lowering of Japan's food self-sufficiency from around 40% to 13%.

Asking Japan to import 87% of its food? That would essentially kill one of the best reasons this country has for attracting tourists. It would kill a way of life, both for small restaurants that depend on local produce, and for fancy places that assure its customers that they provide the very best. It would make rice farming next to impossible, thus all related farm activities in areas that are known for their delicious rice to collapse. These are not empty words in a country that appreciates its farmers. Consumers here are strong supporters of the agricultural policy that has evolved in spite of external pressure.

I have no idea where all those people in rural areas would move, what they would do, how they are supposed to manage.

Farmers are the backbone of rural Japan, and they contribute to Japan's cuisine, with more Michelin Guide 3 star resturants than France, and a very high level of food safety we all can enjoy - also in the cities.

That is connected to postal services, banking and other services in rural areas. Pensions? Health insurance? Hospitals? Ambulance services?

These are other sectors that are targeted for the direct assault and deregulation by the proposed TPP rules.

But the people here clearly understand the gravity of the situation. Thus, they protest. Wouldn't you??

11,668,809 people (so far, and counting) are against the TPP.

Read the rest of this excellent post with links here.

Shisaku has more updates on TPP and lively, great analysis with an emphasis on political actors.

Uncanny Terrain: A documentary about organic farmers facing Japan's nuclear crisis

1.9 million small farms are embedded throughout Japan, forming the soul of the archipelago's traditional culture, rooted in family, community, and heritage. They produce Japan's exquisite, locally grown heirloom foods. Small farms worldwide serve the same deep cultural functions. Japanese small farmers have mutually supportive relationships with their counterparts worldwide, in Europe, the United States, Latin America, Africa, S. Korea, the Philippines and other parts of Asia. The global/local organic farming movement is growing.

The farming region of Tohoku now under seige from the Fukushima disaster is reminiscent of the mountainous region of Appalachia (also under seige by the energy industry: coal companies that blow up mountains, streams, forests using explosives producing more force than the Hiroshima bombs have destroyed numerous small communities and are polluting entire eco-systems). The people of Tohoku, like those in Appalachia, deeply rooted in place and soulful ancestral folk culture, are independent, resilient, and stubborn. They aren't giving up.

Filmmakers Junko Kajino and Ed M. Koziarski have just wrapped up filming for their documentary about Tohoku farmers. In Uncanny Terrain, they explore questions about their future. They conclude that whether the land can be returned to its natural state, “or whether the farmers must abandon their ancestral homesteads, remains to be seen.”

Uncanny Terrain—Organic farmers face Japan's nuclear crisis

The first sprouts are beginning to emerge on Colors of the Seasons Farm, 45 miles from the malfunctioning Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant and 20 miles outside the evacuation zone.

28-year-old Masanori Yoshida left his job as a cook at a French restaurant in Tokyo three years ago to work his family’s land with his wife, siblings, parents, and grandmother. They grow natural crops including "firefly rice," so named because the insects, driven near extinction by chemical pesticides and fertilizer, have proliferated as farmers return to the traditional methods practiced by their ancestors.

The Yoshidas’ farm is one of hundreds of organic farms in Tohoku, the earthquake and tsunami-ravaged region of northern Japan that supplies much of the rice and vegetables to Tokyo and across the country. Government warnings have limited the sale of food grown there since high levels of radiation were detected in some spinach, milk and fish from the region.

“We don’t know if our crops will be safe,” Masanori says. “We can’t ignore this issue. But we won’t stop cultivating our land. We farmers need to nurture the environment, nature and culture, and pass them to them to the next generation.”

Noboru Saitou’s Nihonmatsu Farm is famous for cucumbers. He also grows rice, shiitake, garlic chives, bamboo shoots, and flowers. Noboru works closely with the agricultural city of Nihonmatsu, 25 miles from the troubled nuclear reactor, just outside the evacuation zone.

“Today, the ‘problem’ spinach sprouted,” Noboru says. “We were supposed to ship this after it grew, but now we can’t. After spinach is cucumber season, then rice. When the fields are golden we will harvest the rice. That’s the best part of farming. After that we’ll plant canola. Each plant yields a lot. I hope I can continue this year. But now I see how hard it is.”

Hiromasa Kitagawa is the unofficial leader of Mattari Village, an off-the-grid community of homes made from recycled construction lumber, powered by wind, solar and water, heated by wood fire. The people of Mattari share the food they grow.

“We grow vegetables that you can even eat the skin,” Hiromasu says. “We spend our time and passion to go back to the way vegetables are supposed to be grown… We aim for 100% self-sufficiency. Soon we hope to open our community for people to experience the sustainable lifestyle. It’s cold in winter, but spring is so green, autumn’s colors are vivid, the night sky is beautiful, the water is clear.”

After the earthquake, Megumi Kondou was evacuated from her Chitata Farm. Megumi awaits government approval to return to her farm. She may not be able to grow her renowned koshihikari rice this year. Instead she’s considering growing canola, which she believes may help reduce radiation in the soil, and is a potential source of biodiesel.

Farmers and scientists search desperately for ways to continue safely using this rich land, or restore it to its natural state. Whether they can succeed, or whether the farmers must abandon their ancestral homesteads, remains to be seen.

After suffering the world’s only nuclear attacks in World War II, Japan emerged from poverty and devastation and entered into a period of unprecedented technological innovation and economic growth. Can today’s Japanese respond to this catastrophe with new forms of innovation that will allow this nuclear-dependent society to continue providing healthy food to its people, and live in better harmony with the natural world?

The Project

Filmmakers Junko Kajino and Ed M. Koziarski are embarking on the new documentary Uncanny Terrain, to follow the organic farmers of Tohoku as they contend with the threat that nuclear fallout from the Fukushima Power Plant poses to their land and their livelihood.

From spring planting season, we will document the testing of their land and crops for radiation, their efforts to adjust to the changing environment, through the harvest and beyond.

We are seeking financial support to cover our travel and living across Tohoku in the coming months, and for the purchase of highly portable, high quality video equipment to document what we find.

We will build an international online community of people interested in sustainable agriculture and energy and in the future of Japan, through regular video updates and ongoing dialogue around the issues raised in the film. In the end we will have a film intended for international broadcast and distribution, and around the film we will have generated a wealth of new friends, knowledge and media to address these questions in our own communities.

The Filmmakers

Ed and Junko wrote, produced and directed the psychological drama feature film The First Breath of Tengan Rei. Erika Oda of Kore-Eda’s After Life stars as an Okinawan woman who kidnaps the teenage son of a U.S. Marine convicted of raping her when she was a girl. An IFP Independent Film Lab selection, Rei screened theatrically, at educational venues and festivals across the U.S., Japan and in India.

They’re developing the film and graphic novel Hand Head Heart, based on Junko’s experience growing up in a traditional extended family on a cattle farm in central Japan, and learning the sword fighting martial art kendo.

Their short film Homesick Blues, starring pop singer Zoey (now Remah) as an Osaka girl running off to America to sing the blues, won the IFP/Chicago Flyover Zone Film Festival and played the Hawaii and Chicago international film festivals...

Read more about Ed and Junko's journey with the farmers and people of Tohoku and see more excerpts from Uncanny Terrain their blog:

Seven months since the beginning of the crisis, Japan stumbles toward recovery. Evacuated communities are being reopened near the nuclear plant, even as many efforts to decontaminate land are proving ineffective. With a number of notable exceptions, testing of rice and vegetables is showing much less contamination than was expected based on results in Chernobyl. Researchers investigate the reasons for these levels, considering the differing composition of Japanese soil, particularly certain minerals and bacteria that may remove radioactive cesium or prevent plants from absorbing it—bacteria that may thrive in organically cultivated land.

But the food testing regime is still sporadic, and no amount of lower test results will be sufficient to convince much of the public that Fukushima food is safe to eat. The organic farmers here toil to repair their land using natural methods (land that many of their families have tilled since before the U.S. was a country), to grow their food as free as possible of radionuclides, and to accurately communicate the condition of their produce to consumers. Constantly exposed to background radiation and inhaled particles in their fields, as well as from food and water, the farmers rank with cleanup workers in the groups at greatest risk of suffering health damage.

We will edit the film in Chicago through the fall and winter, and return to Japan next March to cover how the farmers weathered the seasons and how they fare as they prepare to plant again, a year after the disaster. In the meantime, we still need your support to cover the costs of postproduction...

Uncanny Terrain is a documentary about organic farmers facing Japan’s nuclear crisis, and an online community fostering dialogue on food safety, sustainable agriculture, alternative energy and disaster response. Please keep the conversation going by spreading the word or making a tax-deductible donation.

Traditional Americans & Japanese Against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) "Free Trade" Agreement

Poster for the 2008 Black Ship Festival at Shimoda. 

Locals did not appear enthusiastic about the commemorative event.

On both sides of the Pacific, family farmers, small and medium-size business owners, environmentalists, labor unionists, and traditionalists who want to conserve what remains of respective national sovereignty and local culture in the U.S. and Japan are voicing opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) "Free Trade" Agreement.

A recent Mainichi article about organic farmer and poet Kanji Hoshi echoes the thoughts of many traditional Americans as well as traditional Japanese people:

Hoshi is the author of an essay called "Sonno joi no shiso: han TPP no chiiki ron" ("The philosophy of revere agriculture, expel the barbarians: anti-TPP localism"), published in May 2011 in the book, Takahata-gaku (Takahataology).

In it, he writes: "I would like the philosophy of revering agriculture and expelling the barbarians to be the stronghold against the black ships of TPP," Hoshi writes. "We need to give primary importance to agriculture for its production of food for life, and to justly appreciate its function of protecting the environment. If we destroy our beautiful homeland, we will not be able to face our descendents. 'Expel the barbarians' refers to the elimination of our disposable consumer civilization. We need to possess a set of values necessary to live simply and spiritually rich in a mature society, and let us attempt self realization."

Hoshi's philosophy mirrors the "Back to the Land" movement that began in the U.S. in the 1960's and 1970's when Americans began a renewal of traditional regional rural cultures.

A parallel movement gathered steam in Japan during the 1990's, after the bursting of the economic bubble was followed by a "hollowing out" of Japan's industry and "corporate restructuring" (fueled by foreign takeovers of Japanese corporations). These neoliberal changes ended the prospect of permanent and lifetime employment for many young people in Japan who might have otherwise followed their parents' footsteps into the corporate or manufacturing worlds. Koji Nakano’s The Philosophy of Noble Poverty became a Japanese best-seller in 1992. Like their American counterparts, Japanese neo-traditionalists joined an already thriving local farming counter-movement. Many Tokyo-dwellers, disenchanted by or ejected from the neoliberal rat race, moved back to their ancestral rural hometowns.

In both the U.S. and Japan, these Back to the Land and Slow Food/Slow Life pioneers value organic and natural farming, renewable energy sources, quality of life and simplicity. Paul Gruchow's The Necessity of Empty Places elegiac exploration of American rural life before corporate agribusiness and chain stores invaded traditional landscapes epitomizes the American quest to renew local heritage.

Americans and Japanese opposing the TPP are the 99% who are actually conservatives. They want to conserve their economic and social systems as they are and renew what has been lost because of past American and Japanese unsustainable obsession with economic competition and growth—that unduly benefited the 1%. Americans and Japanese opposing the TPP want to save their jobs, their farms, their environment, their ways of life from the radical neoliberal shifts that the "free trade" agreement would bring. Because the deceptive nature about the ostensible benefits of past "free trade" deals have been revealed over time, American and Japanese people know that TPP "free trade" changes would only benefit financiers, corporate agribusiness (factory farms and plantations), some global corporations, and law firms representing these interests.

Who needs or wants cheaper (and shoddier) consumer products made by exploited workers (or quasi-slave laborers in Vietnam and Burma)? Who wants the loss of domestic jobs, delicious locally grown heirlom fruits and vegetables and authentic (from the grassroots up) culture? Who wants the loss of democratically created regulations protecting what's left of our planet, and democratically created labor standards protecting what's left of our human dignity? Who wants the continued erosion of constitutionally guaranteed rights and liberties in places where they're still extant?

Good political analysis (as always) on TPP at Shisaku and sensitive insights (as always) from a food sovereignty perspective at Kurashi. Here are some more articles from September on the American 99% view towards the TPP:

"Unions and Farmers—Plus Ben and Jerry—Unite Against Trans-Pacific Trade Deal":

...After the failure of post-NAFTA negotiations by the Clinton administration to create new trading blocs for Asia and the Pacific and for the Americas, the Bush administration attempted to expand both the geographic and policy scope of an emerging Asian-Pacific partnership. For now it includes the US, Australia, New Zealand, Peru, Chile, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore, but it could be designed to add more countries in the future, even China.

Obama, who had campaigned for a new style of trade agreement, delayed action on the Bush-proposed talks, but by late 2009 he embraced the project and the old paradigm. Although the new text is not publicly available (even though corporate trade lawyers get access), critics—who have surreptitiously seen parts of the text—say it largely follows the NAFTA, corporate-rights model.

But it seems that the Trans-Pacific Free Trade Agreement not only is running into broad-based opposition, including from many businesses without Ben & Jerry’s high-profile social consciousness as well as unions, environmentalists and many other progressive groups. It also faces numerous internal conflicts and contradictions, argues Public Citizen Global Trade Watch director Lori Wallach...

More info and insights from Michele Chen: "Labor Day Showdown: Can Advocates Stop ‘NAFTA of the Pacific’?":

...The provisions of the Trans-Pacific Free Trade Agreement or Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) are still under wraps. But the general outline seems to mimic the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and similar pacts that have brought political and economic turmoil to rich and poor countries alike. The new negotiations are also taking place amid political friction over pending trade deals with South Korea and Colombia, which have run into opposition over concerns about labor abuses abroad and offshoring of U.S. jobs. Yet the White House continues to push free trade as a path toward the country’s economic revitalization...

Manuel Perez-Rocha, an analyst with the D.C.-based think tank Institute for Policy Studies, says that free trade deals tend to use “investment” and “growth” as a pretext for ruthless exploitation. The agreements “push wages lower and dislocate production with the ensuing loss of jobs,” says Perez-Rocha, adding that “the prospects for the TPP are very bleak and workers everywhere must resist it."

- JD

Global World Food Sovereignty Day: "From Food Monopolies to Food Commons"

( Family garden on an island in the Inland Sea. Photo: JD)
Comprehensive analysis of the engineered global food price hikes, the global food crisis, and how to fix it (agro-ecology, food democracy) at Slow Food International. (The author explains why US Big Ag is pushing so hard to force open markets in Asia (and Africa)): "From Food Monopolies to Food Commons" by Eric Holt-Giménez, Ph.D.:

Calls for food sovereignty, food justice and even “food democracy” are ringing from fields to kitchens around the world. In the face of the recurrent food and diet crises plaguing our planet, farmers, farm and food workers, consumers—politically engaged citizens—are struggling to regain control over their food systems. Why?

Because the “solutions” to these crises offered by governments, agri-food monopolies and multilateral institutions—e.g., more “free” trade, genetically engineered crops and the spread of giant retail chains—brought on the crises to begin with. With a billion people “stuffed” and a billion “starved” on the planet, why do the G-8 countries, the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization continue to prescribe catastrophic solutions to catastrophe?

The answer is simple: the oligopolies dominating our global corporate food regime are also in crisis. The record profits and massive wealth they accumulated during the 2008 and 2011 food price inflation crises must be re-invested in order to maintain a compound rate of growth... Where can they re-invest their vast amounts of accumulated wealth? The monopolies have what is called a crisis of over-accumulation.

Who will solve the crisis of over-accumulation for the monopolies? The poor.

The poor are not getting any richer, but as a group they are growing at the rate of 8% and because they make up nearly half of the world’s population they offer a vast, expanding market opportunity for the agri-food monopolies. With the promise of “saving the world from hunger,” these corporations are now busy leveraging public development funds of northern governments to open new markets in Africa and Asia. Foreign food and development aid—which is fuelled by public money—is being directed to poor countries so that they can buy GM grain, fertilizers, pesticides, and genetic engineered seeds from the northern monopolies.

Many studies and reports have shown that agroecology is the best answer to hunger and climate change in the Global South. Poor countries also have to be allowed to protect their own agriculture. The oligopolies controlling our food systems are not solving the problem of hunger—rather, hunger is being used to solve the problem of over-accumulation for the oligopolies...

Over the last three decades the waves of neoliberal globalization has not only ruined local and regional food systems...

Food sovereignty, food justice and food democracy are movements of people that seek other solutions. They seek to re-open public spaces of decision so that people rather than monopolies decide what we eat, how it is grown, and how the multi-trillion dollar wealth of our world food systems is distributed. How can our movements make sure that our public resources are used for the public good rather than monopoly interests? By re-establishing the public sphere within our food systems—by taking back the “food commons.”

A food commons is not only a physical place where food is produced, processed, sold or consumed; it is also a social space where decisions are made in the interest of the common good. Whenever food activists take back a part of the food system in the interest of the common good, they are constructing a food commons. This is why food sovereignty as an organizing concept and precondition for food justice, food democracy and the right to food is so important: it implies a space that is sovereign to the corporate food regime. It is a space in which people—not corporations—decide...

The social construction of food commons is taking place around the world in the nooks and crannies of the existing corporate food regime. Little by little, the different experiences of community gardens, fair trade, community service agriculture, food policy councils, farmer’s movements and consumer movements are slowly converging in their efforts to build a better food system.

Read the entire article here.

Slow, Fair, Humane, Healthful Food: "Occupy the Food System"

Slow Food USA's blog: "Occupy Wall Street: What’s food got to do with it?"

...good, clean, and fair food IS a value of the activists. But what does it have to do with Wall Street?

Food justice writer and activist Jan Poppendeick says the connection is corporate control of agriculture. The statistics are staggering (90% of the corn market is dominated by 3 companies, for example) and the resulting degradation of human health and the environment endangers our health, and the future health of our food supply.

Reclaiming control of the food system from corporate entities is one of the written tenets of the OWS declaration: “[corporations] have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.” Another tenet speaks to animal cruelty inflicted by the common industrial practice of confining animals into tight quarters with abhorrent conditions...

With so many messages on t-shirts and banners it’s hard for any one to rise to the top, but it’s clear that food activists are present on the scene. As Sheila Salmon Nichols noted on our Facebook page, “We might not all agree on all the ideologies of OWS…however, their position on what is happening to our food system is spot-on! Hopefully, this collective energy will move our country/world in a more positive, peaceful, and sustainable direction!”

Comment: The connection between the poor quality of the culture of food in the US and control of our food systems by extremely large companies as mentioned above is spot on. Major advertising budgets target children and adults with ads that have almost nothing to do with health, community or long term life-satisfaction.

"Food Inc." pointed out some of the ways that large companies are willing to directly harm small farmers - who are the best chance for renewed innovation and responsibility in agriculture - for the sake of a few more pennies profit, and increased control over farmers seeds and practices. I strongly support Occupy Wall Street for the simple reason that they are helping all of us to understand the connections between the systems we’ve created and our current reality...

Comment: Many of the rank and file dairy farmers are supportive of Occupy Wall Street.

We have watched as a handful of companies have come to dominate the prices that we receive for our milk. A handful of traders control the Chicago Mercantile Exchange that sets the price of cheese that tranlates into milk price formulas. The most spectacular display of greed was in 2009 when dairy farmers were committing suicides from milk prices that dropped to $9 0r $10 for 100 pounds of milk. There are 8.6 pounds of milk in a gallon) You, the consumer, continued to pay the same in the store. Farmers were committing suicide in rural areas. The CEO of Dean Foods, the nation’s largest milk processor, took home a cool $66,000,000 that year according to Bloomberg.

As markets have become more consolidated, the companies have tightened their grip on us, the average farmers. Our share of the dairy retail dollar has dropped tremendously over the past decade. The leaders of even the largest cooperatives will tell you that Walmart has big power to push us back and down in price. The biggest dairy companies in the US have just piloted an ad campaign to force the prices paid down to the farmers.

Where will this all end? Thank you, Occupy Wall Street. Some of us will try to get to smaller occupy wall street demonstrations since it is hard for us to leave the cows, it is difficult to travel to big cities, but we are with you.

6,000 family farmers protest in Seoul against US-South Korea FTA (KORUS) which would destroy what's left of South Korean agriculture

(Image: Nile Int. (Egyptian TV channel) via APTN)

On Oct. 6, 2011, 6,000 South Korean family farmers protested against the proposed US-South Korea FTA (KORUS), stating the agreement will endanger their livelihood by flooding the South Korean market with cheaper, government subsidized U.S. agricultural products.

Martin Frid, who participated in an organic farming conference in Korea earlier this month, posted on the incredible amount of food that South Korea imports: 80-90%. Most of it comes from the U.S, followed by China.

This is by design and parallels political economic shifts in other countries. The South Korean government uses state policy to intentionally undermine small family farmers (and traditional landed culture), similarly to the U.S. in the 1970's and Japan in the 1990's (when the USTR forced Japan to open its previously fiercely protected rice market). The common agenda against family farmers in these countries (and elsewhere) was and is to enlarge markets and profits for global (especially US) agribusiness ("Food Inc".); alter traditional (local) food production in favor of neoliberal agricultural (plantation monoculture) food production; and to diminish the political influence of family farmers.

In "Crisis at Daechuri - the latest phase of the Korean War," which explores the back stories behind Seoul's forced, violent seizure of farmland to expand a U.S. military base in Pyeongtaek, Brian Mac Grath describes the long domestic war against Korean farmers:

The political activism of Korean farmers has long been a thorn in the side of the global agricultural industry and as such is consistently denounced by the media. After the Korean War, South Korean agriculture was sacrificed to enable industrialization to take place, with land nationalization less thorough and complete than it appeared on the surface.

US agribusiness has gradually gained total access to the South Korean agricultural market, with over half of Koreas food imports now coming from the US. The result could be the total disappearance of the small farmers who are the backbone of Korean agriculture. If the farmers of South Korea can be successfully defeated through the subtle warfare of international trade, and the less-subtle warfare of outright land seizure at Daechuri and Doruri, then Korean nationalism will of itself wither and die, as the South Korea industrial economy is increasingly absorbed into that of the US.

The destruction of South Korean agriculture is a vital stage in increasing the dependency of the peninsula as a whole upon the United States, given the disastrous condition of North Korean agriculture, as a result of flooding, state mismanagement, and international sanctions imposed by the US.

In-depth 2008 reports at Grain.org on U.S. agribusiness introduction of GMO foods into South Korea: "Food Safety on the Butcher's Block" and Daewoo's attempted immense land-grab in Africa for corn and palm oil plantations: "Korean women farmers on the Daewoo/Madagascar land deal" (The deal was rescinded in 2009 by the president of Madagascar who replaced the president who was forced from office (in part for outraging citizens by leasing half of Madagascar's arable land to Daewoo.))

For a compilation of articles on KORUS, please see this post: "Worse than NAFTA: S. Korea-US Free Trade Agreement (KORUS) would hurt U.S. & S. Korean small farmers & workers; Burmese, N. Korean slave labor"

Some background on petrochemical-intensive industrial agriculture from Fritjof Capra's The Turning Point:

Three million American farms have been eliminated this way since 1945...

The farmers who were able to remain on the land had to accept a profound transformation of their image role, and activities. From growers of edible foods, taking pride in feeding the world's people, farmers have turned into producers of industrial raw materials to be processed into commodities designed for mass marketing. Thus corn is converted to starch or syrup...it is not surprising that many children today grow up believing that food comes from supermarket shelves...

In this industrialized system, which treats living matter like dead substances and uses animals like machines, penned in feedlots and cages, the process of farming is almost totally controlled by the petrochemical industry...Nevertheless, a growing number of farmers have become aware of the hazards of chemical farming and are turning back to organic, ecological methods.

In-depth analysis of KORUS: "Capitalism, the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement, and Resistance" by Martin Hart-Landsberg, temporarily available as a free download at the Critical Asian Studies website.

Wangari Mathaai: When we destroy our natural environment, we degrade ourselves; in helping the earth to heal, we heal ourselves

Wangaari Mathaai, the late Kenyan visionary, articulated the interconnections between democracy, demilitarization, human rights and environmentalism in her holistic vision of a life-sustaining civilization:

Spiritual Environmentalism: Healing Ourselves by Replenishing the Earth

During my more than three decades as an environmentalist and campaigner for democratic rights, people have often asked me whether spirituality, different religious traditions, and the Bible in particular had inspired me, and influenced my activism and the work of the Green Belt Movement (GBM). Did I conceive conservation of the environment and empowerment of ordinary people as a kind of religious vocation? Were there spiritual lessons to be learned and applied to their own environmental efforts, or in their lives as a whole?...

However, I never differentiated between activities that might be called "spiritual" and those that might be termed "secular." After a few years I came to recognize that our efforts weren't only about planting trees, but were also about sowing seeds of a different sort—the ones necessary to give communities the self-confidence and self-knowledge to rediscover their authentic voice and speak out on behalf of their rights (human, environmental, civic, and political). Our task also became to expand what we call "democratic space," in which ordinary citizens could make decisions on their own behalf to benefit themselves, their community, their country, and the environment that sustains them...

In the process of helping the earth to heal, we help ourselves.

Through my experiences and observations, I have come to believe that the physical destruction of the earth extends to us, too. If we live in an environment that's wounded—where the water is polluted, the air is filled with soot and fumes, the food is contaminated with heavy metals and plastic residues, or the soil is practically dust—it hurts us, chipping away at our health and creating injuries at a physical, psychological, and spiritual level. In degrading the environment, therefore, we degrade ourselves.

The reverse is also true. In the process of helping the earth to heal, we help ourselves. If we see the earth bleeding from the loss of topsoil, biodiversity, or drought and desertification, and if we help reclaim or save what is lost—for instance, through regeneration of degraded forests—the planet will help us in our self-healing and indeed survival. When we can eat healthier, nonadulterated food; when we breathe clean air and drink clean water; when the soil can produce an abundance of vegetables or grains, our own sicknesses and unhealthy lifestyles become healed. The same values we employ in the service of the earth's replenishment work on us, too. We can love ourselves as we love the earth; feel grateful for who we are, even as we are grateful for the earth's bounty; better ourselves, even as we use that self-empowerment to improve the earth; offer service to ourselves, even as we practice volunteerism for the earth.

Human beings have a consciousness by which we can appreciate love, beauty, creativity, and innovation or mourn the lack thereof. To the extent that we can go beyond ourselves and ordinary biological instincts, we can experience what it means to be human and therefore different from other animals. We can appreciate the delicacy of dew or a flower in bloom, water as it runs over the pebbles or the majesty of an elephant, the fragility of the butterfly or a field of wheat or leaves blowing in the wind. Such aesthetic responses are valid in their own right, and as reactions to the natural world they can inspire in us a sense of wonder and beauty that in turn encourages a sense of the divine.

The environment becomes sacred, because to destroy what is essential to life is to destroy life itself.

That consciousness acknowledges that while a certain tree, forest, or mountain itself may not be holy, the life-sustaining services it provides—the oxygen we breathe, the water we drink—are what make existence possible, and so deserve our respect and veneration. From this point of view, the environment becomes sacred, because to destroy what is essential to life is to destroy life itself.

Read more of this entire excerpt of Replenishing the Earth: Spiritual Values for Healing Ourselves and the World here.

Martin Frid: Support for Japanese farmers from French Organic Farmers

Wonderful news from Martin Frid in his latest post: "Support For Japan From French Organic Farmers".

Those of us who love and support traditional Japanese culture (rooted in small, organic family farms) are thrilled to hear that the French organic farming movement, Urgenci, is renaming their newsletter "Teikei," (cooperation) as a sign of solidarity with the Japanese Organic Agriculture Association (JOAA):

Tei-Kei: Legend has it that the face of the farmer is hiding in the vegetables in the box. The truth is far more prosaic, but none the less elegant. The word teikei 提 携 Is composed of two characters that depict an action : that of an outstretched hand and that of helping each other. This is the term chosen by the Japanese pioneers to designate the first partnerships that were developed between producers and consumers. From the outset, in the 1970s, this new form of direct sales illustrated how to jointly maintain the often fragile balance between farmers and consumers...

At a time when Japan is still suffering from the trauma of the nuclear disaster, renaming our newsletter TEIKEI is a legitimate act anchored in our history. It shows that our movements all recognise our family ties with the Japanese movement and is also a symbol of our unconditional solidarity towards the families that are victims of the disaster. It is an important signal that will strengthen a great many actions that are already up and running. The reconstruction projects carried out with such strength by Hiroko Amemiya to help the farmers in the contaminated zones, as well as the testimony by Shimpei and Toshihide in Aubagne. This is the 33rd Urgenci newsletter, the first to be published using our new name, Teikei. A great deal of it is dedicated to them.

More at the linked post from Martin, who will be visiting Namyangju City, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea in September with the JOAA for the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) World Congress, the first such event in Asia for the organic movement. IFOAM is the global umbrella organization for the organic movement, uniting more than 750 member organizations in 116 countries.

Most (1.9 million) Japanese farms are very small (less than 5 acres). These farms are based on harmony between humans and nature, highly sensitive to ecological balance of their landscapes (Satoyama).

Small is Inevitable: Shift from Consumption-Driven to Sustainable Paradigm

John Einarsen's In the Realm of the Bicycle is not only poetic; it is prophetic.

Firmin DeBrabander's "The Green Revolution Backfires: Sweden’s Lesson for Real Sustainability" published June 10 brings us counterintuitive news that Sweden's greenhouse emissions have increased since Stockholm began pushing electric and hybrid cars because people are driving them more.

The philosopher's conclusion: we cannot save the world by "greening" old habits. The only solution: reduce, even stop driving cars.

The consumption-driven "American Dream" (oversized cars and houses) has turned out to be an environmentally disastrous "World Nightmare" model that can no longer be pushed onto developing countries if the world is to survive: DeBrabander notes that we must shift to a reverse direction, making less developed societies the new paradigm:

American industry hungrily targets the rising Chinese consumer class. For the sake of the planet, we better hope it doesn’t get its way. Consider: China currently has a car ownership rate approximately one-sixth that of the US. If China achieves car ownership rates comparable to the US, that would put an additional 800 million cars on the road. And that’s just China. Even if we somehow succeeded in making China’s fleet super efficient, it would still be more than the planet can handle.

More on this inevitable shift from "Seeking a Cultural Revolution: From Consumerism to Sustainability" by Matthew Berger at Inter Press Service last year:

The last 50 years have seen an unprecedented and unsustainable spike in consumption, driven by a culture of consumerism that has emerged over that period, says a report released Tuesday by the Worldwatch Institute.

This consumerist culture is the elephant in the room when it comes to solving the big environmental issues of today, the report says, and those issues cannot be fully solved until a transition to a more sustainable culture is begun.

"State of the World 2010" subtitled "Transforming Cultures: From Consumerism to Sustainability" tries to chart a path away from what Worldwatch president Christopher Flavin calls "the consumer culture that has taken hold probably first in the U.S. and now in country after country over the past century, so that we can now talk about a global consumerist culture that has become a powerful force around the world."

In this culture, says the book-length report, people find meaning and contentment in what they consume, but this cultural orientation has had huge implications for society and the planet. The average U.S. citizens, for instance, consumes more each day, in terms of mass, than they weigh. If everyone lived like this, the Earth could only sustain 1.4 billion people...

"In India and China, for instance, the consumer culture of the U.S. and Western Europe is not only being replicated but being replicated on a much vaster scale," Flavin says.

Consumption has risen sixfold since 1960, the report says, citing World Bank statistics. Even taking the rising global population into account, this amounts to a tripling of consumption expenditures per person over this time. This has led to similar increases in the amount of resources used – a sixfold increase in metals extracted from the earth, eightfold in oil consumption and 14-fold in natural gas consumption.

"In total, 60 billion tons of resources are now extracted annually – about 50 percent more than just 30 years ago," the report says.

Escalating resource consumption has also led to unsustainable systems of distributing and producing those resources. In the field of agriculture, for instance, every one dollar spent on a typical U.S. food item yields only about seven cents for the farmer, while 73 cents goes to distribution, says the report's chapter on shifting to a more sustainable agriculture system.

It points to this as one outcome of increasingly unsustainable consumption habits. These habits have formed only recently – the same dollar yielded 40 cents for the farmer in 1900 – but they have now become ingrained, it says.

This consumption is based on more than individual choices. As co-author Michael Maniates says, "We're not stupid, we're not ignorant, we don't even have bad values."

Rather, we are acting under the heavy influence of cultural conventions that influence our behaviour by making things like fast food, air conditioning and suburban living feel increasingly "natural" and more difficult to imagine living without, he says.

To prevent future environmental damage, "policy alone will not be enough. A dramatic shift in the very design of human societies will be essential," says the report...Most of the report, in fact, discusses action that has been and can be taken to shift the cultural paradigm, rather than the damage the current paradigm has done.

The 244-page report cites a wide variety of examples such as the enshrining of the rights of nature into Ecuador's constitution and schools pushing children to think more sustainably by giving them healthy, locally-grown lunches and encouraging them to walk or bike to class...

The report also points to the roles different societal institutions can play in spurring cultural shifts. Among these, religion, government, the media, businesses and education all have key roles to play. Taken separately, their efforts might seem small, admits Assadourian, but taken together they can effect real change.

"Keep in mind that consumerism had its beginning only two centuries ago and really accelerated in the last 50 years... With deliberate effort we can replace consumerism with sustainability just as quickly as we traded home-cooked meals for Happy Meals and neighbourhood parks for shopping malls," he says, alluding to the tenuousness of what appear to be deep and solid cultural roots.

"Eventually consumerism will buckle under its own impossibility," predicts Assadourian. We can either act proactively to replace it with a more sustainable cultural model or wait for something else to fill the void, he says...

Earth Day festival this weekend at Yoyogi Park, Tokyo

Fom Philip Brasor's "Earth Day Japan Needed More Than Ever" posted at The Japan Times:

Plans for this year's Earth Day festivities in Tokyo, which organizers predict will attract some 140,000 people, remain fluid in light of the disaster, but in addition to fund-raising activities for the victims of the earthquake/tsunami, one of the themes of this year's festival is saving electricity, an issue that has become much more immediate with the loss of the Fukushima nuclear reactors and the probability of another hot and muggy summer in the city. Electricity for the entire festival this year, including the power to drive public address systems for concerts and lectures, will be generated using recycled cooking oil, or so-called biodiesel fuel. There will even be a car on display that was designed to run on hemp oil.

More than 400 nonprofit organizations and nongovernment organizations will be on hand manning booths, distributing literature and selling wares. The 27 restaurants participating in the Earth Day Kitchen will serve dishes containing ingredients that are locally grown, organic and free of genetically modified elements. The president of Earth Day Tokyo since its beginnings, author, naturalist and Japan Times contributor C.W. Nicol, will honor 2011 as the International Year of Forests by presiding over the Earth Day Forest...Patrons are encouraged to bring their own dishware to cut down on waste, and those who do will receive a discount on all prepared food. The nonprofit recycling group A Seed Japan will provide utensils to those who come empty-handed, but you pay for it...

There will also be workshops in Japanese paper-making and various exhibitions, including one by Japan's only photojournalism magazine, Days Japan, featuring photographs related to issues having to do with the environment and poverty.

At least four nonprofit food resellers will be in the park selling fresh organic produce grown on farms in the Kanto region, some even within the Tokyo city limits. In many cases the farmers who actually grew the fruits and vegetables on offer will be counting the change. Other outlets for consumables include a Himalaya Bazaar featuring handmade clothing and accessories, and a Fair Trade Village occupied by various foundations dedicated to helping small producers in foreign countries get real value for their goods.

Read Brasor's entire article at the above link and find out more about Earth Day Tokyo 2011, Apr. 23-24, Yoyogi Park and other locations in the Shibuya-Harajuku area at www.earthday-tokyo.org

WWOOF organic farm hosts need volunteers in Japan

WWOOF Japan, a member of Worldwide Organic Farm Opportunities (WWOOF) is looking for volunteers who want to live and work on a Japanese organic farm. The earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear crisis has not affected many parts of Japan, and these farms have had cancellations because of the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear crisis:

Earthquake / tsunami update

Thank you so much for all your warm messages.

Japanese Hosts are really appreciating WWOOFers' and ex-WWOOFers' strong encouragements.

We have at last contacted all our Hosts who are situated where the heavier earthquake / tsunami was experienced, and found them all to be safe. Also, we are receiving contact ongoing from the family and friends of current WWOOFers, and so far we have ascertained that all those WWOOFers for whom we have inquired, are safe.

March 16, 2011

To WWOOFers: In the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami, there are many Hosts who need support from WWOOFers, as usual.

The big earthquake & Tsunami occurred in the northern part of the main island of Honshu. Please feel safe and give your good support to Japanese farmers and other Hosts. Thank you for your support.

Some of the opportunities that sound wonderful:

Kyushu area - Oita:

We are friendly family. We treat WWOOFers as real family. We welcome WWOOFers from all over the world. You can enjoy Obachan's (grandma) delicious traditional meals every day. Our children are happy to meet WWOOFers. Onsen (hot spring) is near here. If you want, you can use our bicycle, so you can go around this area. It is nice.

One of many WWOOF farms in Okinawa:

Okinawa:

We are seeking Woofers who can stay for over 2 weeks, starting at the end of April 2011. Long period welcome! We have 3 small chirldren so some one who likes kids will be better. The ferry from Okinawa Hontou is no longer available. If you are staying for a long time we will pay for the price difference betweeen the ferry and the flight. please ask details.flights from Naha can be as cheep as 7600yen if you book 28days in advance; the ferry was 6500yen, in this case we can pay 1100yen back to you. We are waiting for your contact!! Wwoofers from overseas must check out...http://www.jal.co.jp/yokosojapan/

And this poignant message from the prefecture south of Fukushima:

Kanto area - Tochigi

***Our computer is out of order. We are sorry but we cannot reply to WWOOFers soon at the moment. ======

＋＋PLEASE HELP US. WE LEARN AND STUDY JAPANESE POWER OF PEACE. POWER OF NATURE FROM JAPANESE HISTORY, FOR WORLD PEACE!　７ha. FRIENDLY.** Kennkou-seikatuwo kihonntoshite,●○　Kennkouni tunagaru annzennna syokuryouno-seisannwo shiteimasu. えいが　ととろ（トトロ）の　イントネーション〓音調（おんちょう）〓抑揚（よくよう）〓にほんごを おしえます。EIGA "TOTORO"-NO intonation〓onncyou〓yokuyou〓NIHONGOWO OSHIEMASU. きてくださいKITEKUDASAI.