Janet Dwyer is currently spending time in Japan as part of her four-year SATOCONN project and has previously blogged about her experiences.
She has recently spent time on Sado Island as part of the project and has written this blog about her experiences and activities.
I’m currently in the middle of my stay, returning to Kyoto after two days on Sado island with my RIHN colleague Ei, and hosted by Jas Black who is living on Sado and working on different projects, including SATOCONN. The island is very lush and green at this time of year: I don’t think I have previously been so aware of the thickness of the mixed and deciduous woodland which clothes most of the sloping land along the two distinctive hilly ridges of Sado’s land mass.
We spent a fascinating time visiting the area in the south (ko-Sado) where farms grow a lot of Persimmon fruit on widely-spreading orchard trees that are planted in clearings in the forest, intermingled with small rice terraces cascading down the wiggly valley slopes towards the coast. It is a hidden landscape, intricate and delicate. Soils are deep, rich in iron and quite sandy, making landslides a constant risk – quite a contrast with the paddies on the western slopes and shores of Lake Biwa near Kyoto, where the grey soil is so sticky you can mold it into a tight ball between your fingers.
We met a young farmer who did a degree in dental technology at a University off the island and worked for a number of years before he got the ‘call’ from his ageing parents and grandparents, as the eldest son, to return home to take on the farm. He has been back on Sado farming for around six years now and seems to love his family holding and the local area, working alongside the older generations to tend the orchards and work the paddies. The farm is so surrounded by woodlands that each small series of terraces is isolated, with views out over the treetops to the sea, but no sense of other people being anywhere nearby. He knows that he is one of a rare and shrinking number of young farmers on Sado, but for now the farm is viable and they are working to increase the volume of fruit produced. Everything is sold via the JA – the Sado branch of the national farmers’ co-operative – so he doesn’t get any premium for the fruit or the rice, but he acknowledges that this might be something worth aiming for in future, if they can find additional help to develop distinctive routes to market. Some Government support for farming and maintaining the terraces in hilly areas of Japan is received, but apparently it is insufficient to cover the costs of the work carried out by farmers and community members on a regular basis.
The other farmers whom we met on this trip, one an ex-teacher and one an ex-marketing manager, were both selling online and direct to a growing number of customers attracted to their fruit and rice products because they are grown with care and some reduced use of agrochemicals.
The marketing man is very enterprising and with a strong social ethic, offering rice-planting and fruit harvesting ‘experiences’ to local people and visitors to Sado, aiming to encourage more of them to consider a career in primary production or, at least, a closer connection to the land. He is managing a small apple orchard: the trees were planted by the previous generation of farmers on the land that he has now taken over, and the apples are Japanese varieties but not specific to Sado. We discussed his interest to visit the UK to learn about cider production – he previously worked for a Sake brewery, so he is keen to develop this new product: no-one on Sado is making cider, yet.
As we returned to the mainland on the jetfoil that whizzes across the Sea of Japan to Niigata, I reflected on the creative spirit and energy among the new generation of Sado farmers that we are getting to know. The overall numbers signify a steep and alarming decline in active farmers on the island, but the experiences that we have had create an impression of positive futures which could persist, despite that.
I hope that SATOCONN can help to support and strengthen the prospects for Sado’s people and landscapes, through the living labs work that our team will be co-developing with them.
