September 2011 – Uncanny Terrain

September 30, 2011

Baking bread by headlight

We produced this series of 15-20 second videos for Tokyo nonprofit Ganbatte 365, about Fukushima City bread maker and hemophiliac amputee Yuji Ohashi, whose company Ginray was one of the few reliable food sources in the area in the immediate aftermath of the 3/11 disaster.

During several nights of blackout, they baked and sold bread by car headlamps. Now he must seek organic suppliers outside Fukushima, even if local ingredients test negative for radiation. The videos will screen on electronic billboards in Tokyo and other cities.

September 21, 2011September 19, 2019

Fukushima farmers keep calm and carry on [VIDEO]

by Ed M. Koziarski
Grist Magazine
9/20/2011

Round, rough-skinned pears fill our Fukushima City apartment. Before the pears it was enormous, impossibly succulent peaches. Apples will be next.

Prior to the meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant six months ago, people all across Japan would send seasonal Fukushima-grown fruit to their relatives and neighbors. But now those outside Fukushima are too wary of possible radioactive contamination in produce grown here — and the fruit piles up.

The locals live with the risk. With a surplus of crops growing in the adjacent countryside, the fruits circulate in Fukushima like proverbial American fruitcakes at Christmas. We conspired to regift a box of pears to one neighbor, but they beat us to it and gave us another box. So we eat them all.

No radiation detected in Watanabe’s Fukushima fruit

The organic peaches, pears, grapes and apples Kinju Watanabe grows in Fukushima City have shown no detectable radiation, despite soil contamination in the area of 2,000 Becquerels per kilogram, and other farmers’ fruits testing at 40-80 Bq/kg.

Although grown in contaminated sectors, Fukushima organic produce distributor Takehiro Makuta says all the food he distributes has tested “ND,” not detected—below the detection limit of the measurement device, not necessarily zero.

Some researchers theorize that bacteria and fungi that flourish in organic soil prevent the crops from absorbing cesium, or transmute the cesium into non-radioactive barium.

Uncanny Terrain is a documentary about organic farmers facing Japan’s nuclear crisis, and an online community fostering dialogue on food safety, sustainable agriculture, alternative energy and disaster response. Please keep the conversation going by making a tax-deductible donation.

September 13, 2011

Sugeno fights for his Fukushima farm

Seiju Sugeno is an organic farmer in Towa, Nihonmatsu, 50 km from the failed Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. The Abukuma Mountains partly shielded his rice fields from contamination, but runoff is an ongoing threat. Chairman of the Fukushima Organic Farmers Network, Sugeno works aggressively to clean his land and prevent his crops from absorbing radioactive cesium. He will work to reduce the contamination year by year, rigorously testing his yield and reporting any contamination he finds. His 23-year-old daughter Mizuho works with him. He hopes she can build a sustainable life for herself here.

Uncanny Terrain is a documentary about organic farmers facing Japan’s nuclear crisis, and an online community fostering dialogue on food safety, sustainable agriculture, alternative energy and disaster response. Please keep the conversation going by making a tax-deductible donation.

September 12, 2011September 12, 2011

The Harvest Approaches

Sugeno relaxes in the grass beside his radish field, Geiger counter in hand.
Junko and Sugeno finish planting radishes in his mountaintop field in Nihonmatsu.
Guests at Sugeno's farm enjoy flowers transplanted from the evacuation zone.
Asami looks out on his rice field in the mountains of Kitakata.
Asami shows Junko his favorite vantage point.
Asami and his intern Ota in the chicken coop.
Watanabe's fruit is showing undetectable radiation levels despite surrounding contamination in Fukushima City.
Masanori Yoshida looks out on his ancestral land, foreseeing big changes ahead.
Yumi and Masanori Yoshida care for their vegetable garden.
Yumi Yoshida displays her sweet potatoes.
Junko digs up a choice bunch of sweet potatoes.
The Yoshidas have been eating a lot of sweet potatoes. Sales of the bumper crop have been slow.