They should also make Japan more resilient if the United States tries — as Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has hinted — to pry open Japan’s markets for rice and beef, which are protected by tariffs.
Iwasa was running an IT company and working on an MBA in Tokyo when his coastal hometown of Yamamoto in Miyagi Prefecture, an area famous for strawberries, was hit by the March 2011 tsunami.
He rushed to help with relief efforts and later saw an opportunity to combine his tech skills with the specialized know-how of a local farmer.
He now heads six-year-old GRA Inc, which has 20 full-time employees and 50 part-timers, including four dedicated to Read More
It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with
San Joaquin Valley pomegranate production has reached 30,000 acres, doubling from 2006 to 2009, and is expected to continue growing. Licensed growers, packers and marketers are expected to ship 30,000 boxes of Angel Red, a premium, soft-seeded pomegranate. Most of the 2010 Angel Red crop will go to Japan, a growing and discerning market for the California premium, bright red fruit.
Pomegranates were relegated to trivia status until about a decade ago, when Los Angeles billionaires Stewart and Lynda Resnick discovered 120 acres of pomegranates tucked away in a pistachio orchard that their Paramount Farms operation had purchased.
Pomegranates have also been identified as a functional food in Asia where women Read More
The current concept of a farmers’ market is similar to past concepts, but different in relation to other forms – as aspects of consumer retailing, overall, continue to shift over time. Similar forms existed before the Industrial age, but often formed part of broader markets, where suppliers of food and other goods gathered to retail their wares. Trading posts began a shift toward retailers who sold others’ products more than their own. General stores and grocery stores continued that specialization trend in retailing, optimizing the consumer experience, while abstracting it further from production and from production’s growing complexities.
Modern industrial food production’s advantages over prior methods depend largely on modern, Read More
10 Health Benefits of Apples
1. Great Source of Cancer-Fighting Antioxidants
Apples are a high-antioxidant food and a very significant source of flavonoids in people’s diets in the U.S. and in Europe. In the United States, 22 percent of the phenolic antioxidants consumed from fruits are from apples, making them the largest single source of these compounds.
Apples are ranked second among all types of fruit for their total concentration of phenolic compounds, a class of bioactive substances that includes flavonoids, second to cranberries. And compared to all other types of fruit, apples have the highest portion of free phenolic compounds, which means these molecules are not bound to other compounds in the fruit that can slow down their beneficial Read More
“Farmers’ intuition and experience may not always result in a good harvest. So it’s crucial that we capture that as explicit knowledge in technology and automation, and use that to increase productivity,” Iwasa said. “Also nurturing professional farm managers is needed.”
By leasing surrounding land, Iwasa expanded his farm to 2 hectares, which is about 10 times the size of an average strawberry farm in Japan.
Such larger-scale agribusinesses, many using new technologies, are the future, said Kazunuki Ohizumi, professor emeritus at Miyagi University who has been studying farming trends in Japan for decades.
“Large-scale farmers are the ones to revitalize Japan’s agriculture, which will be changed significantly,” he said. “Of course, Read More
When we have come this far (our first view of the Atlantic), it’s good to see familiar friends. Four Season Farm is run by Barbara Damrosch, Eliot Coleman, and their daughter Clara. Attention to and success with innovative farming methods is the family story, and you will not find more beautiful vegetables growing anywhere. Chef Devin of Aragosta spent her youth in Vermont planting gardens, churning butter and making ice cream with milk from the family cow. Devin started her cooking career in Maine, and since then has traveled far and worked with some of the greats: Thomas Keller of The French Laundry, Michael Leviton of Lumiere, Melissa Kelly Read More