AGRICULTURE
Japanese farm writer finds similarities
YOUNGSTOWN — Family farms in Niagara County are continents away from growers in Japan, but a Japanese senior writer from one of the world’s largest agricultural daily newspapers said the two countries have much in common.
Masaru Yamada stopped for a whirlwind tour of Niagara County on Monday, visiting with members of the Cornell Cooperative Extension and area farmers. He met with fruit farmer Jim Singer in Appleton, Lockport apple farmer Julie Blackman and Appleton dairy farmer John Sweeney, visited the Youngstown farm market to meet with Tom Tower and lunched with Margo Bittner at the Winery at Marjim Manor in Barker.
He had just come from farms in Lancaster, Pa., and New Jersey, and said his next stop would be Detroit and then Chicago.
“These days our [Japanese] farmers are facing many difficulties, the same as you are facing. In some ways we have some similarities in our ways of thinking. But we do have some big differences. Believe it or not our farmers farm less than three acres.”
He said that even though Japanese farms are smaller, they would appreciate the Niagara County farms because they grow similar foods and have similar “family farms.”
He spoke to Tom Tower, who told Yamada that his family has been farming in this area since the Civil War era and called himself a “seventh- generation farmer.” Blackman of the Lockport apple farm is a sixth-generation farmer.
Yamada said farmers in his country trace their farming roots back thousands of years.
He also said that in Japan, they believe that Americans produce acres and acres of only corn and soybeans, but this article in Japan Agricultural News will show them that there is more to America than corn.
Marketing directly to the consumer is also gaining in popularity in both America and Japan.
Tower, whose farm market is now in its 25th year, gave Yamada a tour. He said he now farms a variety of fruits and vegetables on 95 acres, but at one time was farming 240 acres and selling his fruit to a middleman for baby food. He said now, with his market, he has a lot of community support.
He said he is opposed to pesticides, saying, “There’s not anything more personal than what you ingest.”
Tower said a lot of farm markets have failed. “I say if you say you are better, you gotta be better. It’s not about buzzwords, fads or fashions. It’s what really tastes good. I baby-sit my heirloom tomatoes.
“Fortunately we are near an area where people appreciate fresh fruits and vegetables,” he said.
Bittner, of the Barker winery, shared with Yamada some of the technology used to prune the orchards.
Yamada said Japan imports a lot of soybeans, and he and Appleton dairy farmer Sweeney talked about genetically modified soybeans that dairy farmers may use for feed.
“I think it will be helpful for our readers to see that even though we are very far away and the foods we are eating are totally different, I can find lots of similarities. I can change the image of the American farmer,” Yamada said.
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