Helena Norberg-Hodge: On Earth Day, an Economics for People & Planet

Helena Norberg-Hodge's summary of the clash of two major worldviews we now see in play throughout our planet:

Much has changed since the first Earth Day in 1970. Not only have our ecological crises come into sharper focus, it has also become obvious that we need to rescue not just the Earth, but also its people from the clutches of an economy gone mad. Worldwide, more and more people are recognizing that fundamental changes to that economy are urgently needed if our most pressing problems – ecological, social, economic, and even spiritual – are to be solved. Instead of trying to tackle a seemingly endless list of separate problems, strategic shifts in economic policy would put us on a path that is good for both people and the planet.

Over the past decades, globalization, or the continued deregulation of trade and finance, has created a world dominated by giant banks and corporations. Because governments almost everywhere have catered to their demands, we are now faced not only with global warming, extinction of species and dramatic increases in pollution, but also with financial instability, endemic unemployment, increased conflict, and epidemics of ill health and depression...

We need to move in exactly the opposite direction – away from economic globalization and towards the local. This doesn’t mean eliminating all trade or adopting an isolationist attitude – it simply means shortening the distances between consumers and producers wherever possible....

The localization movement is beginning to bridge the divides between groups that are working to make the world a better place: environmental activists, small business owners, community leaders, educators, social justice campaigners, farmers, workers’ rights advocates, religious and spiritual groups. An exciting, once-in-a-generation coalition is emerging: a coalition that offers real hope for broad-based and lasting renewal.

Read the rest here: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/04/22-1

Still Praying for Tohoku: Uncanny Terrain follows mayoral candidacy of organic farmer in Fukushima

"Uncanny Terrain"  2012-2013 interview footage with Akira Asami, organic farmer in Fukushima

Via filmmakers Junko Kajino and Ed M. Koziarski, at work on Uncanny Terrain, a documentary exploring the lives of organic farmers in Fukushima in the aftermath of 3/11:

Akihiro Asami left his life as a city salaryman to raise his family on a self-sustaining organic farm in the mountains of Kitakata, on the western outskirts of Fukushima prefecture.

When the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant melted down in 2011, Akihiro's wife Harumi evacuated with their two young daughters. Akihiro stayed behind to continue farming. In the face of public fears of Fukushima food, some of Akihiro's neighbors were unable to keep their farms going and moved away. Akihiro found his crops showed no detectible contamination from the fallout. He worked to hold his community together.

In 2012, Harumi and the girls moved back to Kitakata, accepting the risk of exposure over the pain and disruption of separation and displacement.

Akihiro Asami on the campaign trail in the snow

In December, Akihiro announced his campaign for mayor of Kitakata on a platform of local economies and natural agriculture as an alternative to the unsustainable systems that spawned the nuclear disaster.

Next week we return to Fukushima to capture Akihiro's dark horse campaign, a hopeful protest by one Fukushima farmer for a better way to live.

Please help us to continue our journey, complete the film, and share the stories of Akihiro and his fellow Fukushima farmers with the world. We gratefully accept tax-deductible donations at Uncanny Terrain.

See more photos of Akihiro Asami and follow the election at Uncanny Terrain on Facebook.

Final Staw: "What a Natural Farmer Eats"

(Video: Final Straw)

Via Final Straw, a documentary by Patrick Lydon and Suhee Kang:

This series of 'Short Take' interviews offer sneak peaks of characters from the upcoming documentary film, which explores Japanese natural farming and the relationships between people and the environment.

This time around, we meet Osamu Yoshino, a natural agriculture farmer, and Keiko Domae a food activist who started one of Japan's first Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) networks. These two individuals worked together to build a successful natural farm by fostering a strong consumer awareness of the relationship between food, farm, and people...

Natural Farming was brought to the modern day agricultural world by two Japanese farmers, Masanobu Fukuoka and Mokichi Okada, and since its introduction has been slowly making its way into communities around the world who wish to create a more sustainable life, and to create closer connections with the land in our towns and cities.

More about Final Straw:

Due for initial screening in Spring of 2014, Final Straw is a cinematic exploration of Japanese natural farming, and...individuals who offer simple solutions to modern issues of sustainability, both on the farm and in the city. The film interacts with a cast of office workers, chefs, musicians, and farmers alike, all of who are students of the late Japanese farmer/philosopher, Masanobu Fukuoka.

It all started on a small mist-covered mountain farm in South Korea, and continued to include over 20 natural farmers in East Asia and the USA...And today, with over 1/2 of the world’s population living in urban areas, it seems we need to revisit this connection with nature more than ever before.

More about Osamu Yoshino, Keiko Domae, and the development of CSA in Japan:

Natural Agriculture farmer finds locating a market more challenging than letting go of chemicals (Lisa M. Hamilton, Newfarm.org, Feb. 13, 2004)

Restoring the Soil, Restoring Ourselves: Yoshikazu Kawaguchi

Great photography and content about Yoshikazu Kawaguchi 

at filmmaker and photographer Patrick M. Lyndon's website. 

 Lyndon's and Suhee Kang's film, Final Straw, 

explores natural farming in Korea, Japan, and the U.S.

Ted Taylor's beautiful essay at KJ, "Even in 'Just Enough' There is Abundance," follows farmer Yoshikazu Kawaguchi's return to traditional organic farming and the development of his natural philosophy:

In fact, all life in the natural world is lived, as demonstrated in the interrelationship of all living things. Plants cannot exist without animals, and vice-versa. If there is good harmony between the organisms, plants, and animals, the cycle of life continues. As a farmer, Kawaguchi's role is simply to nurture this natural order, by cutting the weeds back just enough so that new rice shoots can grow, but later her allows the weeds to grow along with the rice in harmony. This leads to wholeness, with everything living together.

Final Straw, an upcoming documentary by Patrick M. Lyndon and Suhee Kang, also explores Kawaguchi's world  (and that of Seonghyun Choi and other natural farmers in Japan and Korea):

Environmental artist duo Patrick Lydon and Suhee Kang... are now in the final post-production stage for the Final Straw documentary. Due for initial screening in Spring of 2014, Final Straw is a cinematic exploration of Japanese natural farming, and a philosophical ride through the minds of amazing individuals who offer simple solutions to modern issues of sustainability, both on the farm and in the city. The film interacts with a cast of office workers, chefs, musicians, and farmers alike, all of who are students of the late Japanese farmer/philosopher, Masanobu Fukuoka.

It all started on a small mist-covered mountain farm in South Korea, and continued to include over 20 natural farmers in East Asia and the USA. The Final Straw is a story about food, life, and philosophy from individuals who have a great deal of delicious secrets, and a great deal of wisdom to impart about life. Yet, while the Final Straw is a deeply rooted exploration of natural farming, it’s also a film which teaches equally as much about how to live life as it does about how to grow healthy food. And today, with over 1/2 of the world’s population living in urban areas, it seems we need to revisit this connection with nature more than ever before.

Over the past 100 years, our gradual reliance on industry and separation from the natural world have pushed us into the most epically unsustainable and unhealthy time period yet known to humanity.

Food and diet have quietly become the leading cause of death in the U.S., and on a world scale, intensive chemical-based industrial agriculture have caused the deterioration of billions of acres of farmland, the starvation of millions of human beings, and the loss of over 75% of our planet’s agricultural diversity.

The destruction of natural resources continues at an alarming rate, and both governments and food producers are looking for answers to questions of human health and ecological sustainability, with a multi-billion dollar industry leading the charge to find the most economically profitable answer.

It’s slightly amusing then, that that on a few small farms tucked away in the mountain valleys of Japan and South Korea, Patrick and Suhee found a very simple 4,000 year-old answer to this very perplexing modern question.

2009 Asia Forum for Solidarity Economy Concludes Successfully in Tokyo

The Asia Forum for Solidarity Economy, which held its first meeting in the Philippines in 2007, wrapped up its second conference in Tokyo on November 10.

Over 400 people from some ten Asian countries attended the four-day event, which was held in Tokyo's Aoyama district at the dual venues of Aoyama Gakuin University and United Nations University. The forum featured sessions examining the solidarity economy within both global and Asian contexts, as well from a number of additional perspectives including microfinance, fair trade, social welfare, local agricultural initiatives, and international finance regulations.

The program also included three site visits to see the fledgling solidarity economy in action, including an organic farm in Ogawa-machi, Saitama; social enterprise initiatives in Yokohama; and local citizen actions in Atsugi-shi, Kanagawa.

One of the primary conference organizers was the Pacific Asia Resource Center (PARC), an organization with roots in the era of Vietnam War protests. Together with its newly created sister organization, PARCIC (PARC Interpeoples' Cooperation), PARC continues to focus on strengthening ties between Japan and other Asian countries with a number of grassroots-level initiatives.

From the 2009 Forum website:

The Solidarity Economy (SE) is an alternative framework for economic development that is based on the principles of solidarity, equity in all dimensions, participatory democracy, sustainability, and pluralism. The solidarity economy framework seeks transformation rather than band-aid solutions, yet rejects an one-size-fits-all blueprint. It isn't an abstract theory nor pie-in-the-sky utopianism. Rather, it pulls together and builds upon the various elements of solidarity-based economy that already exist. Some are new innovations,some are old, and we already have a variety of experiences in Asia. And the journey of creation is ongoing.

A number of recent English-language reports on the solidarity economy in Japan and beyond may be found on the forum's website here and here. The website of the Asian Alliance for Solidarity Economy, based in the Philippines and subtitled "Building an Alternative and Compassionate Economy", also has extensive information on how the solidarity economy is taking shape throughout Asia, including links to various member organizations' websites. Reports from the Tokyo event may also be found in its "Solidarity Asia" section, here and here.

The Third Asia Forum is planned for Malaysia in the fall of 2011, with a preliminary meeting scheduled to be held in Bangalore in August 2010.

"To go forward with the solidarity economy, we must change our mindset at the local and territorial level to build a holistic approach, taking into account the challenges of globalisation," said event organizers in an initial post-forum report. "Our networking process takes time, but since Asia has more than 50% of the planet's population, it is of strategic importance."

--Kimberly Hughes

Darrell Moen on Organic Farming as Social Change: "Regional Revitalization in the Okitama Basin of Yamagata Prefecture"

Anthropologist Darrell Moen's fascinating account of disenchanted Japanese leaving large cities and taking up organic farming to revitalize rural areas:

Excerpt from "Regional Revitalization in the Okitama Basin of Yamagata Prefecture":

This report describes the ways in which a group of organic farmers in Yamagata Prefecture have been able to effect basic structural changes that contribute to the social transformative process of counter-hegemony.

Members of the Okitama farmers' League (OFL) have initiated a regional revitalization plan that is based on the concept of eco-circularity in which local household food wastes and other organic materials are converted into compost for use by area organic farmers. By forming organic farmers' collectives, members provide farm-related work in rural areas during the long winter months. The women farmers in the group formed a support group for farm wives to fight collectively against female subordination within the household as well as to improve the overall position of women in the Okitama area.

They are challenging the dominant culture's values and social assumptions, and are engaged in creating new cultural values and definitions of self in relation to others. The Okitama Farmers League offers a vision of a noneconomistic, democratized, and environmentally sustainable society centered on universal principles of human rights, social justice, and popular participation in the reformulation of the meanings attached to work, authority, culture, family, community, gender, and consumption.

At each of four regional organic farmers' groups I visited in Japan while engaged in my dissertation fieldwork research, I found at least two or three member farmers who had experienced living in the megalopolises of either Osaka or Tokyo for an extended period of time (between four and ten years). Some of these farmers left home to attend colleges and universities, returning to the family farm upon graduation; others had pursued careers in the city after finishing their schooling.

Referred to as the "U-turn phenomenon" in Japan, increasing numbers of the sons and daughters of farm families are returning to their natal towns and villages from often prolonged stays in major metropolises, and a large number of those who return and take over family farms are doing so on the condition that they will be able to farm organically. They bring back with them not only invigorating new ideas and new forms of behavior, but also eye-opening stories of the alienating lifestyles and hardships associated with city life that make life in the countryside appear greatly preferable in contrast.

The returnees often breathe new life into regional towns and villages, and their enthusiastic determination to succeed as full-time organic farmers, helping to form various organic farmers' collectives and (by the mind-1980s) working with other rural residents to revitalize the countryside, often acts as a catalyst, motivating others to work together to improve their lives.

The presence of the returnees accelerates the process of transcending the rural-urban dichotomy, as they maintain their ties (material and ideological) with both areas. Because of their familiarity with the hectic and congested urban lifestyle, their friendships with urban residents, their knowledge of broader social issues and their experience with some of the movements associated with them, and their ultimate decision to choose the rural over the urban, they have been able to make significant contributions to the growth of the organic farming movement in the relatively remote regional areas of Japan.

In this report, I focus on a group of organic farmers in Okitama County (Yamagata Prefecture) who are involved in revitalizing their entire regional economy.1 Okitama County, with its three cities, five towns, and numerous villages, lies in a fertile basin surrounded by the Northern Japan Alps. Situated in the middle of Japan's snow belt, the county has an agricultural season that lasts only six months, and 95 percent of the county's farm families obtain most of their income from a combination of local factory employment at subcontracting firms and migratory labor during the six months of winter.

(Originally posted at the Kyoto Journal website)