Friday, February 7, 2020
Tsukasa Takebayashi (31 years old) from Hokuryu Town won the Grand Prize at the "2019 Hokkaido Young Farmers Conference - Agricultural Message Section" held at the Hokkaido Jichiren Hall (Sapporo) on Tuesday, January 28th and Wednesday, January 29th.
Mr. Takebayashi is originally from Hokuryu Town. He graduated from the Faculty of Agriculture at Hokkaido University and worked as a reporter for the Japan Agricultural Newspaper for about five years before returning to his hometown to become a farmer in 2017.
This is a message from Takebayashi, who aims to create management and rural areas where agriculture becomes an aspirational career, based on his experiences covering agricultural policy as a journalist and the Kumamoto earthquake.
We have received permission from the person in question to publish the message, so we would like to present it to you in full.
Hokkaido Young Farmers Conference
The Hokkaido Young Farmers Conference brings together young people who are the backbone of Hokkaido's agriculture to exchange information and deepen connections on agricultural techniques, management improvement knowledge, rural life and rural revitalization, and other topics, with the aim of creating a new agriculture and rural area in Hokkaido by improving their skills and disseminating messages from young farmers to society at large.
▶ Organizer
・Hokkaido Agri Network ・Hokkaido 4H Club Liaison Council ・Hokkaido Agricultural Public Corporation ・Hokkaido▶ Sponsorship
・Hokkaido Board of Education ・Hokkaido Central Federation of Agricultural Cooperatives ・Hokkaido Agricultural Improvement and Extension Association (Public Interest Incorporated Association) ・Hokkaido Agricultural Council (General Incorporated Association) ・Hokkaido Agricultural Guidance Association ...▶ Participants
・Young farmers, agricultural trainees, agricultural organizations and those involved in training agricultural leaders, etc.
Participated in the 59th National Young Farmers Conference as a Hokkaido representative
Mr. Takebayashi will be representing Hokkaido at the 59th National Young Farmers Conference, which will be held at the National Olympics Memorial Youth Center (Shibuya-ku, Tokyo) on Wednesday, February 26th and Thursday, February 27th. We wish him every success.
Full message: "Is it a waste to become a farmer?"
"You're a farmer? Graduated from Hokkaido University? Quit working for the agricultural newspaper? Wow, that's a shame."
At class reunions, at friends' weddings. I've heard this on various occasions in the three years since I returned to my hometown to take over my family business. My father has always told me, "If you can use your skills elsewhere, even if you don't take over the family business, that's fine." Given that, is my choice really a "waste"?
First of all, I thought about what is so wasteful. Education? I don't study to get a job, but maybe it's not necessary to become a farmer. Money? I quit just in time for sowing, so I missed my May bonus, and my salary wasn't bad either. But is that enough to evaluate me? At first, I thought I would announce that there is no such thing as wasteful. But that may be the reality. In the end, I was left feeling confused and unable to come to a conclusion.
I'm not sure if this answers the question of why I wanted to become a farmer, but I've come to the conclusion that I'd like to take this opportunity to vent my frustrations: "Because it's not just someone else's problem!"
People all over the world, both city dwellers and country folk, say that agriculture is important. The people who told me it would be a waste were saying the same thing. Still, I think the reason they feel it would be a waste to be a farmer is because they see the reality of agriculture as something that doesn't concern them.
I believe this feeling is the result of what I learned during my university days and my time as a reporter for an agricultural newspaper.
I love studying, and the environment I grew up in helped me decide to study agriculture. I studied agricultural economics, and because I loved studying so much, I stayed at school an extra year, for a total of five years. In my graduation thesis, I concluded that "in a certain town, farmland cannot be protected unless farmers over the age of 60 farm an average of 30 hectares in 15 years." To be honest, this alone didn't really convince me to become a farmer.
There was one more thing I learned. It was through student council activities at the Hokkaido University Keiteki Dormitory. The dormitory is run entirely by students, and there is no caretaker, which is rare these days, and I also served as the dorm manager. Every single task was difficult, but my biggest enemy was indifference. Meetings were a struggle, and even people couldn't show up to sort the trash for recycling. Behind the scenes of my life, there is someone else's sweat and hardship. It was extremely difficult to convey that this is not something that should be dismissed as something that only happens to other people, and that it is not "someone else's problem."
These two things I learned in university came together, and with a desire to widely communicate the reality of agriculture, I joined the Japan Agricultural News after graduating. I also enjoyed bar hopping around the city, but this time I'd like to talk about my work. Being a reporter was busy but fun. I started out covering the social affairs section, and was transferred to government ministries and the JA, then to Fukuoka Prefecture, where I was in charge of Kyushu, Okinawa, and other areas, for five years.
This was a constant series of encounters with people who could not be dismissed as "someone else's problem." The youth division across the country suddenly decided at a meeting to launch an anti-TPP campaign and disbanded. An hour later, they gathered in front of the Liberal Democratic Party and sang a chorus of "No to TPP." The anger and passion were incredible. I also interviewed a farmer in the area affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake who had lost his wife in the tsunami. Seeing him continue to farm despite the despair was so painful and difficult that I remember throwing up in the car on the way home from the interview.
Then, I came to a major crossroads when I was covering the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake. Just after the earthquake struck, a colleague and I headed to Kumamoto just after 9pm, and we covered the story from 5am until 10pm the next morning, completing our article submission. We somehow managed to get back to the hotel that was still open, and went to bed in preparation for the next day, when the main earthquake, measuring a seismic intensity of 6+, hit at 1am. I remember rushing under my desk and listening to the hotel walls creak, thinking only of the fear of dying and how I could survive. But somehow we managed to survive and continue our coverage.
The next day, I covered two locations, and it made me realize that I still felt that the earthquake and the lives of farmers were something that didn't concern me. The first was a tomato farmer in his 50s. On the day his house collapsed, he had left the evacuation center early in the morning to start harvesting his tomatoes, fearing that his tomatoes would be ruined. The other was a JA nursing home near the epicenter. They had been providing day care services for elderly people affected by the disaster without a single break. Can you believe it? If I had been there, could I have done this? I couldn't help but ask myself that question.
After handing over the interview to the next group, I returned to my room and started thinking about my hometown of Hokuryu. I still believe that writing articles for the sake of agriculture is a truly important job. But surely I need to learn more about the world of agriculture and delve deeper into a world that is no longer just someone else's problem. That's what I thought.
I don't know if I'll be able to earn more money than before. I don't have the joys of city life either. It may seem like a waste. But in Hokuryu, famous for its work as an agricultural worker and its gorgeous sunflowers, this is a reality that affects everyone. I'm the first new employee at the Rice Center in 20 years. I have to think about what to do with the 150 towns of Iwamura, which are short of successors. I'm currently discussing with local residents whether to steer the company towards incorporation or to consider a system of joint management based on a farming group.
What we need to do from now on is to stop feeling like it's a waste. We need to earn money and have fun. We need to make agriculture a desirable career and create rural areas in our future.
This is not someone else's problem. I am building my own community and town. From now on, I want to become a farmer where there is no such thing as "mottainai" (wastefulness).
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