Dakkoku
They said nothing would grow. They said that we need to put in their fertilizers and weed killers. They said that trying to harvest by hand would be too hard. They said lots of things.
But...
Despite our neighbor's prediction that we would get about 150kg of rice from our .8 tan of rice field, we have successfully harvested almost 300kg. Granted, that is a very small fraction of what our neighbor gets from the same size area, but we are happy that their earlier predictions that nothing would grow without chemicals was not accurate. We also would have had more, but we left one section unharvested because there were just too many weeds and we were too busy to deal with it. I concede that we would have gotten more rice had we used weed killer, but we are also planning to sell our excess and expect that if we sell it directly to people who care about their food we can get double the price they get from the local farm coop where they dump everything.
While we will not get rich (obviously) by selling a few extra kg of rice, we also did not put as much money into the production as our neighbors would have on a similar plot of land. The only machinery and gasoline used was to till the field before planting (something we wanted to do by hand but the neighbor insisted on doing with the combine) and to take the rice off of the straw (which is depicted in the photos in this post.) Oh yeah, there was also one instance when we had to use a weed-whacker to cut the area around the field in order to live up to community standards of "tidiness", despite having no apparent functional logic. We are attempting to remedy this next year by ordering a good old-fashioned scythe which (we hope) will help us to trim the weeds much more efficiently than using the hand held kama blade that people in Japan used before gasoline powered devices were introduced.
Harvesting the rice didn't go as smoothly as we had hoped, however. There were two days of clear skies and sunshine, which meant that our rice, drying on racks, was dry enough to run through the de-kernelizer. We weren't ready to take the kernels off that day, but the forecast called for rain the next, and we will be pretty busy for the next two weeks after that, so we decided to at least collect the bundles of rice still on the straw and store it under a plastic sheet or in our basement. It took five van-loads and about an hour before sundown.
Once our neighbor saw it sitting in front of our house, however, she felt obliged to help and the next morning she came over to tell us that their entire family had rearranged their plans to help us harvest the rice. It is the guiltiest I have felt since we moved here. Her husband had to cancel his official duties as a village official in order to help her in their rice field so that her son, who was originally supposed to help her, could instead help us use the machine that she had agreed to let us borrow (but failed to mention that she didn't want us to use it alone). What's worse, they had to harvest their field before the rain that afternoon.
Another neighbor came out to help us bundle the rice. This is the same neighbor that showed us how to cut and bundle the rice stalks by hand, and seems to be very happy to have people doing it "the old way". Once we had prepared the rice for dakkoku (taking the kernels from off of the straw), we called the neighbor's son (also our neighbor) to run the machine for us. He didn't speak a word the entire time. Ouch.
After three hours, we had finished the vast majority of our rice. What was supposed to be five bags, turned out to be nine. The biggest problem now is finding where to store the leftover straw. We want to use some in the winter to try our hand at making traditional wara crafts to make our own natto. The rest we will use for natural mulch in our fields next year. The straw that will be used for mulch can be left in the yard to be covered by snow, but the straw we want to use has to be someplace that will be less enticing for mice than our warm basement. For now we just stacked it against the wall behind our house.
In exchange for their help in the morning, and because we "forced" them to change their plans, we went to help them finish their field. In roughly the same space, they harvested over 30 sacks - twice what we took in!
We were glad to help, and happy for the physical labor. The only downside was the loud machine that ruined the beauty of being out in the mountain filed. Of course, harvesting that much rice by hand would have taken a looooong time, and this was only one of their fields. With so much to do each year, I see why they need a machine, but it reminds me of how such machines that make agriculture easier, and greater yields easier, is exactly why we need easier agriculture and greater yields. On the micro level, they need to produce more to pay for their investments in the machinery and chemicals. They need the machinery to handle the increase in yields. Zooming out (to something I don't want to get into), it seems that the more food we make the more people we can feed, and the more people we can feed the more people we can make, and the more people we make the more food we need. It all just seems like a bad, bad, spiral into...
Comments
If you don’t mind.. and only if you have the time, do you mind elaborating on what you mean by “the more people we make the more food we need. It all just seems like a bad, bad, spiral into”. I don’t want to misinterpret what you are submitting (Babies = Bad?). I understand that population growth has a major impact on our natural resources but as a future father I would be interested in an expanded explanation regarding your views on this topic.
P.S. How much are you selling the rice for?
Posted by: C.J.Feyen | October 6, 2008 10:32 PM
Hi C.J.
I don't mean to say that having babies is bad. We are thinking about having a baby of our own. Looking at it on an individual basis makes me sound like a jerk, but on the whole, if we are artificially inflating the carrying capacity of the planet through non-sustainable means, it seems to me that the planet (or any species in an ecosystem) will respond by taking advantage of that exploitation. While I feel that humans (as much as any other species) have a genuine need and desire to reproduce, nature tends to keep that in check and regulate how many babies we (as a whole) produce and survive.
I think that if we live more within our means (meaning the means of the ecosystem) we will naturally, in the future, have less children and a more sustainable population. Now we are living outside our means. It is like buying a house with borrowed money that we have no realistic idea of how we will pay back.
My comment was not about the evils of individuals having babies (which is why I didn't want to comment on it) but rather pondering the effects of producing more food than the ecosystem can realistically provide for an extended time frame. It is obvious to me that in the end, those "excess" (and I don't like to use that word because I, you, my mom, my friends, my enemies could all be "excess") people or their offspring will eventually suffer.
I don't blame anyone for having babies. But I think that we should consider the true carrying capacity of the earth, and if we keep that in mind, we as a species may naturally (be forced to?) adjust our birthrate to a sustainable level. I would not advocate controlling birth, so much as working on sustainable social and economic systems and let the birth rate control itself (no matter how scary the results are)
Posted by: bastish | October 6, 2008 10:57 PM
Nice post Kevin, nice story!
Posted by: Paul | October 7, 2008 01:23 AM
What do you think of the above in light of the fact that it has been due to (and in) industrialized societies that the birth rate has dropped? (i.e., it was agricultural societies that required having more children to work in the fields, etc.) I agree with you 100% that the world is overpopulated (one of the reasons Tim and I don't feel obligated to have more kids and are considering having only Toby and no more - not sure yet, though) - but when you mention "the birth rate controlling itself" I have to admit I was very grateful as a female for the opportunity to make choices about when to have a baby and certainly to have the chance to have a baby without a 50% chance of dying (via modern medicine and vs. the "old days.") The birth rate used to control itself, and many women died horrible, painful deaths in childbirth. Interesting points you make, though ....a very complex issue (to say the least.)
An afterthought, maybe we have screwed up the environment so badly that the birth rate WILL eventually be contolled naturally....in some way of which we can't even conceive yet..... very interesting.
(And not to sik all these women's issues on you when we don't even talk that much! : )
Posted by: Shannon | October 7, 2008 09:36 PM
This is a great post, thank you. I'm very interested in where you managed to order a scythe.
I think you are pretty much on point here. And there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that sooner or later, whether we like it or not, we will have to live within a sustainable world. Meaning machinery and chemicals becoming obsolete and a greater percentage of the population responsible for growing food.
As for myself, I'm studying as much practical knowledge as I can right now and hope to begin natural farming very soon. I will pass these skills on to my son.
Posted by: jonathan | October 7, 2008 11:01 PM
Another afterthought I had: I understand (as you may counterpoint) that in response to my first sentence in my comment, RE: agrarian vs. industrialized societies and how many children they have, that in this day and age, where both true agrarian families with 8 children exist vs. industrialized families with 1.75 children co-exist on Earth, it is the industrialized family with 1.75 children that contributes WAY more to the current environmental problems we face. I do understand that. It's just interesting.
How do we realize the goal of population control WITHOUT subjectivity and Nazi-esque extremism? This post has been of interest to me because Tim and I discuss population control a lot (hope your readers don't think I'm extremo psycho). While we can discuss it on the macro level, how do you bring it down to the micro level? How do you make it personal and real? Like you said, maybe I am the excess, and Tim & Toby... it's very easy to discuss it in large-scale terms, but once it gets personal, it hurts......
I know your original post said you didn't want to get into it.......but thanks for the post, discussion, and thought-provoking follow-up posts.
Posted by: Shannon | October 8, 2008 09:30 AM
Shannon, I feel stupid ot have not fully organized my thoughts about this, but as far as I have managed to by now...
Looking at population graphs, I see a huge increase in global population after the industrial and green revolutions. This did not happen until we started exploiting the planet on such an unprecidented level.
The interesting thing, as you mention, is that birth rates in Europe, the US, and Japan and other developed countries are lower. I guess this is because we in industrialized countries have more choices than people used to have. We can put of having children until the last biologically possible moment - all in order to follow our dreams. The only reason we can do this, though, is because our industrialized society is over-drawing the resources of the *entire* earth and only these few generations in a few countries will benefit from such freedoms.
I wonder if the "farmes need more kids" argument can now be replaced by "exploited people need more kids" - or have more kids because of lack of education and opportunity that the expoiters have.
Living here, I feel a need to have more children in the village because if things go on as they are, this village will no longer exist in 30 years. The thing is, if people have more kids here (be it to help on the farm or not) it will have less environmental impact on the earth than people having more kids in the city, simply because the ecological footprint of a person living within a kilometer of where the majority of their food is produced naturally have a smaller footprint. That is not to say we do not have a footprint. As you mentioned, you and I and the people living around us have a much bigger individual footprint than probably a family of eight on a farm in vietnam.
While these thoughts are all randomly thrown in here, another thing I was thinking about is how incresed yeilds through unsustainable means is exactly what allows people to live in the city and rely on other people to produce their food. If we didn't have that much food, the cities would be much smaller and more people would produce their own food. People would very carefully consider the carrying capacity of their farm and if they should have another child or not (at least, this is how it was in Japan and other cultures for a long time before modern agriculture). There would be less time to spend making destructive technologies as well.
As for how to go about population control without selecting people to be exterminated, I have no answer. I read that infanticide has traditionally been acceptible practices in many cultures, and in some the elderly would leave the tribe to die when they became a burden, and war was a population control method as well. Although I certainly don't think that this is an answer now, as people's moral views have obviously changed a lot through the years. I think we are left with no choice, because most people would be against doing things that we find morally repugnant. We are simply going to wait for the ecosystem to do it for us. It think it will be just as terrible, just as unfair (due to socail / economic class), and just as painful to our concience.
When that happens, you and Tim and Toby are welcome to hop on a home made raft and journet to Japan where you can join us to help us make our own food! We can support a family of 8 or more! :D
Posted by: Kevin | October 8, 2008 01:02 PM
Just a couple comments on your replies above.
My experience has been that people in the city generally have a much smaller ecological footprint than those in the country for several reasons irregardless of where the food comes from. Let's forget the fact that most people out in the country are far from self sufficient. When I am in the city I stay in a 600 sq foot apartment with 3 people and rely exclusively on public transport. When I go out to the country I stay in a 3500 square foot house with 5 people and a detached garage with 4 cars. It's not hard to figure out who is using more resources here and I'd say this is not unusual.
It's easy to romanticize the country, but the truth is, it would make more sense if people grew food all over the place and not just in the countryside.
The industrialized nations are in decline in every sense of the word. These countries enjoyed there booms already. Now countries like China get a turn. I'm sure you're aware that China already has population controls in place. So in terms of global over population, nothing you say or do can change a thing. Like you said... we are simply going to wait for the ecosystem to do it for us.
Sorry if this sounds negative, but I feel like debating something that cannot be changed is counter productive.
Posted by: jonathan | October 8, 2008 10:36 PM
Just a couple comments on your replies above.
My experience has been that people in the city generally have a much smaller ecological footprint than those in the country for several reasons irregardless of where the food comes from. Let's forget the fact that most people out in the country are far from self sufficient. When I am in the city I stay in a 600 sq foot apartment with 3 people and rely exclusively on public transport. When I go out to the country I stay in a 3500 square foot house with 5 people and a detached garage with 4 cars. It's not hard to figure out who is using more resources here and I'd say this is not unusual.
It's easy to romanticize the country, but the truth is, it would make more sense if people grew food all over the place and not just in the countryside.
The industrialized nations are in decline in every sense of the word. These countries enjoyed there booms already. Now countries like China get a turn. I'm sure you're aware that China already has population controls in place. So in terms of global over population, nothing you say or do can change a thing. Like you said... we are simply going to wait for the ecosystem to do it for us.
Sorry if this sounds negative, but I feel like debating something that cannot be changed is counter productive.
Posted by: jonathan | October 8, 2008 10:38 PM
Just a couple comments on your replies above.
My experience has been that people in the city generally have a much smaller ecological footprint than those in the country for several reasons irregardless of where the food comes from. Let's forget the fact that most people out in the country are far from self sufficient. When I am in the city I stay in a 600 sq foot apartment with 3 people and rely exclusively on public transport. When I go out to the country I stay in a 3500 square foot house with 5 people and a detached garage with 4 cars. It's not hard to figure out who is using more resources here and I'd say this is not unusual.
It's easy to romanticize the country, but the truth is, it would make more sense if people grew food all over the place and not just in the countryside.
The industrialized nations are in decline in every sense of the word. These countries enjoyed there booms already. Now countries like China get a turn. I'm sure you're aware that China already has population controls in place. So in terms of global over population, nothing you say or do can change a thing. Like you said... we are simply going to wait for the ecosystem to do it for us.
Sorry if this sounds negative, but I feel like debating something that cannot be changed is counter productive.
Posted by: jonathan | October 8, 2008 10:39 PM
I have enjoyed reading both of your comments, Kevin & Jonathan. I often feel very much like your last statement, Jonathan: I feel negative, because how much should we debate something that I'm not sure we can change? I believe we humans are a "dumb" mass who are destroying the earth, and we will eventually face the repercussions. (and this may just be a natural cycle.) There's our population control.
I also find the "city v. country" enviro impact question very interesting. I've been doing a lot of reading lately that pushes getting everyone back to the city so that we CAN save the country. It's me & Tim in suburbia (in the middle) who are the problem. Believe me, we know it. I just wanted a back yard for Toby....and Tim didn't want to live in the country.
Also, if we are somehow able to get to an ideal sustainable, agrarian model, I believe there are some industrialized products that could still help us and be worthwhile in this "new world", eg. computers & wireless technology. And someone is going to have to be in the cubicles designing them and in the factories making them, to support those using them in the country. Where do we draw the line? ?????
I'll shut up now, so you can let this subject drop. :)
PS: we'll start getting the raft ready....
Thanks, -Shannon
Posted by: Shannon | October 8, 2008 11:15 PM
jonathan, I agree that there are many people in the city who do have a low footprint and while I have no means to measure our footprint or our neighbors', just based on what I think I see, I would guess that we have a smaller footprint than we had in the city. Sure, the living space per person was smaller in the city, but we don't use any more energy to heat or light it than we did in Tokyo - it is just bigger, and bigger doesn't mean more energy, in fact, we will soon use much less because it is much easier to use renewable energy (we will be installing a little hydrogenerator and using a wood stove for what little heating needs we have - and yes, I know that there are not enough trees in Japan to scale to the population) here than it is when you are tied to an apartment on the grid. There is much less infrastructure needs, no need for subway, no air conditioned department stores with their doors wide open all day in the middle of summer, and we can get by on local food almost exclusivly.
Also, we spend a lot less gas/public transport trying to escape from the city on weekends, we have less waste (no starbucks so no cups to throw away) We have little need for heating or cooling, we use the computer less because we are outside more, etc.
We use the car more now for sure (never had a car in Tokyo), but this is because of our customers. In fact, our biggest problem (sounds bad to say this) is our customers. If we had no We have people coming from all over Japan and the world which is not good for the environment at all. We are focusing this year on reducing that impact. BUT, in order to live in the city, we both had to have jobs with companies that ALSO had employees and customers traveling all over the world (many more lights than we have had customers this year), and required much more infrastructure and resources to stay in business than we do now.
Our neighbors have a bigger footprint than we do, but I am not convinced that it is bigger than most people living in the city - if you count the fact that the food they are making (their biggest use of resources) is being produced to ship to people living in the city.
I agree that people in the city should start producing their own food. There is so much space in Tokyo wasted on shrubs and ornamental plants that could be used to grow soy beans, cabbage, corn, or many other edibles.
I am not romanticizing the countryside, I just really, really like it here. I feel at home here. I never felt at home in Tokyo. It is not just because of the nature either - it is because the people here have a community. I know it is not for everyone, but it makes sense to me that people should look at what it is they are really looking for in life, and what their needs are, and how they are satisfying those needs. If people did this I think the city would become more "countrified" as well. Many fewer starbucks, many more home/rooftop gardens. Many fewer people having to go out on a Friday night to relieve the stress of living in the city. The economy would suffer though...
And no, I wasn't trying to debate anything. This is why I didn't want to talk about it in the first place - Thanks Shannon! ;P
Posted by: Kevin | October 9, 2008 01:27 AM
Shannon,
I comepletey understand where you are coming from with this, and I feel the same way too much of the time. Put everyone in a city so they stop destroying the rest of the planet. The problem for me is that if you are going to force people to live in an unnatural way like that, it is just a less horrifying measure than killing people for population control. I REALLY needed to get out. I could not imagine living the rest of my life in Tokyo. I would not want to force that onto anyone. (Although I know that many people would REALLY hate to live in the country and REALLY need to be in an urban environment.)
Another problem with this, I think, is that if everone lived in cities, it would require "new" agricultureal methods, such as hydroponics in skyscrapers etc. The problem I see with this is that healthy food comes from healthy ecosystems, and systems are complex- much more complex than anything that people have been able to create. I have no proof, but it seems logical to me, that healthy food comes from healthy soil and healthy soil comes from an enormously complex ecological web. Current farming treats the soil as simply a container to grow someting. How can one get the complexity of an ecosystem into a skyscraper when we don't even fully understand the complexity? Or are we going to continue on this reductionsit path?
Certainly with todays oil/chemical intensive industrial farming methods, we could put 99% of the people in the city, and a single farmer could remain in the country to grow the food, and that is the direction it is going, but that is far from sustainable. Sustainble agriculture takes more man (and animal) power. This means MORE people in the country.
If people in the city realized how their food was produced and the impacts it had, they might decide to pay more for lower impact, higher quality food. This in turn would allow farmers to hire the help they need to provide lower-impact food. This would mean that MORE people could live in the country with LESS environmental impact. The problem now in our village is that, although Japan is self-suficient in rice, trade agreements require that we import crap rice from China and the US and lower the price of domestic rice and therefore people can not afford to remain in their village, or at least can not afford to be farmers. This causes them to have to commute to the nearby city (raising their commuting footprint). We are importing rice from all over when we have enough here! It's crazy.
Unless there are strinct rules about how long the grass on your lawn can be in your neighborhood, check out this link...Ten minutes later: Dang! I was just reading a few days ago about a couple that sold their SUV, tore out their driveway and lawn, and replaced it with a garden. I can't find that link now. Sorry.
Although people lived a long time without them, I think most of the internet and wireless workers are there to support Coke, GE, Army, and any other company you can think of (that is the type of client I was supporting in my job). Very few of our neighbors even have an internet connection. The only reason I still use a computer is that I am used to it (read: addicted) and I feel I have to in order to be a part of this society. I would not be supprised if someday in the future you hear the last from me and I go off-line. It would be sad, but it would also be very librating. I am just not there yet. (not even NEAR there yet). And don't get me wrong, I am grateful for the internet and understand its value. But I see it as an extremely useful tool, but at some point, its useulness will be eclpised by its environmental destructivness (if that hasn't happened already).
I suggest a kayak. It is the ultimate in unsinkable ocean transportation. You can even follow the model of the inuit. Tim can paddle while you and Toby and the cat are stufed into the hull.
Posted by: Kevin | October 9, 2008 02:16 AM
Kevin,
I'm sorry if you took my reply as a personal criticism, it wasn't directed at your lifestyle in particular. I think you'd agree, though, that you are living an exceptionally unique country lifestyle.
I just want to be clear though that the country/city comparison is irrelevant. If sustainability is the goal, it's much more practical to advocate that changes be made in place - now. It matters much less where the place is. We can hardly have entire cities migrating to the country in the name of sustainability now can we?
Posted by: jonathan | October 9, 2008 04:05 PM
By the way, you've mentioned more than once the unsustainable nature of your current business model that requires people traveling long distances to visit you. This is exactly what I mean when I say that advocating change in place is most practical. For example, encouraging and teaching people in Tokyo to produce food would likely have greater and long-lasting impact than having the occasional house guests visit.
And if you don't think urban sustainability can be done, you should look at food production in Cuba as an example.
Posted by: Jonathan | October 9, 2008 04:19 PM
I agree with Jonathan that not everyone can just pack up and head for the country side (even if we would like to), and urban agriculture is a plus for everyone.
Kevin mentioned the use of hydroponics in skyscrapers (aka. Vertical Farms) which is a concept continuing to gather steam, but the nutrients in the hydroponics mixture would probably come from outside of the city (perhaps a big chemical factory) and more than likely be petrol based. Which I think we all can agree is not sustainable, but I think that hydroponics are efficient and provide part of the solution to urban agriculture.
Considering we don’t know the “true” cost of distributing food from the countryside (or another counrty) into the city because we do not have accurate carbon costs assigned to foods (yet), I believe the solution rests in our ability to coordinate and dissipate.
An individual with a small garden will never be able to be 100% self sufficient and my balcony is a horrible place to try and raise a chicken. However, green roofs are all the rage in “Green” architecture and there are companies like “Sky Vegetables” that are trying to construct rooftop gardens on boxy grocery stores. The supermarket will never grow everything that it sells but it’s a start, and it’s an example of what I mean by dissipate. The effort of growing food is not City vs. Country, but one that is spread between households, local communities, and larger agricultural areas. Veggies grew just fine on my balcony and I was proud to eat something that I nurtured. Growing fruit can be a community effort like when the community comes out in mid-June to collect all the cherries from the trees in Yamagata. Grains are a bit harder to grow in the city and are best produced in large amounts in the country side.
Urbanity should include time to tend to the garden and enjoy the fruits of our labor. This is part of what I mean by “Coordinate”. Many hands make light work.
So, in a city like Tokyo where does the extra agricultural land come from? Every corner is filled with developed property. Here’s a suggestion: Covert parking lots and side roads to community gardens. Goodbye cars, hello neighbors.
Posted by: C.J.Feyen | October 10, 2008 12:05 PM
Good stuff C.J.Feyen.
Notice that I'm saying urban sustainability, implying that there may very well be inputs. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Even in an energy scarce world we still have to move things from one place to another. Self-sufficiency is a ridiculous notion IMO, for individuals, communities, and cities.
Need a place in Tokyo to grow food? For starters, How about 3.41 square kilometers of palace garden that looks pretty damn nice but isn't doing a whole hell of a lot. Look carefully enough and there are plenty of places to grow food. What's lacking is the awareness and vision to make significant change.
Posted by: Jonathan | October 10, 2008 12:49 PM
Congrats!!! Great job. With the price of rice doubling...you have done a great job. I wish I could try some : ). [I did have some home-grown rice from Yamagata once. ]
Posted by: weekendfarmer | October 10, 2008 01:51 PM