What took them so long?
Yomiuri Shimbun notes that Japan's Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry next autumn will for the first time initiate a project to promote high-level organic farming skills and the organic cultivation of agricultural products:
The ministry will call on individual farmers with specialized knowledge--such as farming without pesticides and chemical fertilizers--to cooperate with the research into their techniques. Information gained through the project will be shared with new agricultural businesses in a bid to proliferate organic farming throughout the nation.
Yomiuri: Agriculture ministry to promote organic farming
This is great, but also some 25 years behind schedule. I have the 880 pages thick book written by Ogura Takekazu, called "Can Japanese Agriculture Survive?" first published in 1979. Ogura was the chairman of the Agricultural Policy Research Center, and he wrote, as one of his proposals on Japanese Agriculture Policy:
Recently, organic farming... has been advocated by some people. This advocacy makes sense against the overdependence on technological development in the developed countries. Another cause of environmental pollution is from the large scale use of intensive animal husbandry. Farming of this type should be reexamined to be combined with field crop farming or horticulture. The objective of the conservation of natural resources means more than that. Agriculture should contribute to prevent soil erosion, to fecundate soil, and to conserve the landscape of the countryside.
Let's hope the research will also benefit the farmers, and ultimately the consumers.
("Fecundate" - not a word you hear too often!)
The ministry will call on individual farmers with specialized knowledge--such as farming without pesticides and chemical fertilizers--to cooperate with the research into their techniques. Information gained through the project will be shared with new agricultural businesses in a bid to proliferate organic farming throughout the nation.
Yomiuri: Agriculture ministry to promote organic farming
This is great, but also some 25 years behind schedule. I have the 880 pages thick book written by Ogura Takekazu, called "Can Japanese Agriculture Survive?" first published in 1979. Ogura was the chairman of the Agricultural Policy Research Center, and he wrote, as one of his proposals on Japanese Agriculture Policy:
Recently, organic farming... has been advocated by some people. This advocacy makes sense against the overdependence on technological development in the developed countries. Another cause of environmental pollution is from the large scale use of intensive animal husbandry. Farming of this type should be reexamined to be combined with field crop farming or horticulture. The objective of the conservation of natural resources means more than that. Agriculture should contribute to prevent soil erosion, to fecundate soil, and to conserve the landscape of the countryside.
Let's hope the research will also benefit the farmers, and ultimately the consumers.
("Fecundate" - not a word you hear too often!)
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