Jennifer Toews-Shimizu, originally from a farm near Winkler, Man., now lives in Tokyo where she grows a small garden. She says the blow of the earthquake and tsunami are overwhelming Japanese farmers.
With the rush of tsunami reruns off the television, the average citizen in unaffected areas of Japan and the rest of the world is now moving on with life.
However, the thousands of farmers in affected areas are not. Spring has come, and yet it hasn’t. No rice or vegetables will be planted this spring in large affected areas.
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As I sit at my laptop in Tokyo, sipping coffee and hearing once again the usual morning sounds of the rush to work, my thoughts turn toward the northern part of Japan.
However, it’s not as far north as you might think – just two and a half hours north of Tokyo, where unrecovered bodies and roaming farm animals are a reality for thousands of residents who have been blocked from the nuclear radiation affected zone.
Surviving residents were evacuated to gymnasiums, with two or three people living in a two metre area, knowing that their homes, deceased loved ones and farm animals were left under skies tainted with radiation.
The least of their worries were the thieves who came in before the blockades were put in place.
But for these people, the blockaded zone is only the tip of the iceberg.
It is the unseen that drifts beyond these blockades, onto every schoolyard, into every open window and onto the warming paddies waiting for the seedlings to be planted in neat rows. This is what each farmer is thinking about when the winds change direction.
Nuclear power comprises a mere 9.7 percent of the country’s total power. Now, one plant of 55 across the country has begun to endanger millions of lives, and for the long-term, thousands of acres of now virtually worthless farmland.
Agriculture was already a struggling vocation. Young farmers often rely on introduction services to get Chinese wives to marry, and the average farmer was 60 in 2005.
It seems to me that the last straw has broken for these farmers.
The unseen hand of radiation has just begun destroying thousands of livelihoods, including those of thousands of farmers.
The government has put in place a crop-planting ban across many acres of land, as well as massive shipping and consumption bans.
As well, consumers are shunning certain vegetable, meat, fish and rice products based on the location printed on the food label. Information is varied and contradictory as the media attempt to produce expert opinions from sources that are not directly receiving research funding from nuclear power companies.
Prices of vegetables produced within the plant’s surrounding prefectures (Ibaraki, Gunma, Tochigi, Fukushima and Chiba) have fallen to half that of vegetables from areas that consumers consider safe.
Demonstrations are uncommon in Japan, but desperate farmers gathered in front of the TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) offices in Tokyo last month. The blow of the earthquake, tsunami and subsequent radiation is overwhelming for a country with few natural resources that already relies heavily on imports.
However, with hard work and Japanese gaman (fighting spirit), many pieces can be picked up with time.
On the other hand, farmers face the question of what to do with the land. How will they pay the loans on combines, tractors and the land itself?
Do they sell the land at its current state and price and move, or do they stay and wait it out? The question is, how long will the wait be, and how long can they survive?
