With the New Year upon us, the rice supply of Japan — this most important staple in the life of this nation’s people has been tainted by radiation.
Now the Japanese government announced a ban on future rice planting in areas where contaminated rice was detected all around the Northern island where Fukushima perfecture is located.
Because of the radiactivity present in the Fukushima soil, this most fertile soil of all Japan, it is now illegal to plant rice at all in the perfecture of Fukushima and beyond in the radiation exclusionary zone.
But the personal stories are best told by the family size agriculturalists and small scale farmers from the area.
These being some of the best rice farmers in Japan who are located in the Fukushima Prefecture and who are losing the little hope that has kept them going for almost a year of tortuous expectations and dashed hopes for a return to normal.
What should I do, is the key question asked here.
And with the New year being a time of change and planning the question isn’t answered easily. Because if you look at Chernobyl, people are reconciled to the fact there is no going back there. For a very long time… Not Ever.
There’s really nothing to be done.
Still some farmers remain hopeful even though they had to receive sleeping pills and medicine from doctors because they can’t even sleep at night.
Eiji Watanabe, 62, a farmer from the Yoshikura area in Nihonmatsu on Dec. 8, when the government banned the shipment of rice harvested in Shibukawa this autumn after detecting radiation doses surpassing the provisional upper limit of 500 becquerels per kilogram in some of the region’s paddies, considered suicide.
A few weeks later, on Dec. 27, it was announced that rice planting in the region will likely be banned for the next harvest year.
For farmers like Watanabe, however, — in whose rice radioactive cesium has not been detected — this means one more year of forced inactivity resulting in an enormous financial, emotional and familial damage. Surrounded by six tons of stored rice packages, harvested this autumn, and with nowhere to ship them, Watanabe is at a loss as to what to do.
“I understand that the government can’t allow the shipment of potentially affected rice, but if we can’t plant next year it will be very difficult. I wonder until when this will continue.”
Prior to the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant disaster, Watanabe — the eighth generation of a family of farmers — used to ship about 50 tons of rice to small shops in Tokyo and other retailers every year.
However, in mid-March he received a call from a shop owner, to whom Watanabe had sold rice for 17 years, telling the farmer he can no longer buy his rice. “Customers won’t buy it,” he was told.
The shop cancelled orders for some nine tons of rice from this year’s harvest and 2.7 tons of last year’s — the total sales of which usually stand at about 2.98 million yen. Watanabe was also asked to sign a cancellation contract, the postscript of which read: “If the government and Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) had taken appropriate measures after the nuclear disaster, we wouldn’t have had to do this. The rice had been very popular among our customers.” “The shop owner was apologetic,” says Watanabe. “It is my duty to leave this rich land to my future generations,” says Watanabe, whose son — a university student in Tokyo — said that one day he would return to Fukushima. “I want to tell this to the authorities: Give me back my land,” said Watanabe.
Hiroyuki Suzuki, a friend of Watanabe’s and also a farmer in the neighboring village of Otama, has plans to file a lawsuit against TEPCO, the operator of the crippled power plant, next year, demanding compensation for losses caused by the nuclear crisis. Encouraged by his 61-year-old friend, Watanabe also plans to take part in the lawsuit and has already turned to law books for reference.
Like farmers, officials from the agricultural administration department in Fukushima, a city where rice shipments continue to be banned in two districts, Onami and Watari, can’t hide their bewilderment at what to do. “The majority of inspected rice packages in Onami had radiation of less than 100 becquerels per kilogram. Yet, shipments were banned for the whole area. We don’t know how to explain this to farmers,” said an official from the department. “Farmers hope that decisions are reached only after every paddy is inspected one by one. If farmers don’t produce rice for a whole year, it is unclear whether they can return to normal farming later on. The industry is under threat in the whole area.”
“I’ve lived through bad harvests and droughts, but I’ve always looked ahead with hope, because I knew there was a future. This time, however, it seems like there’s no hope for the next harvest,” said Morio Sato, 74, a seventh generation farmer, as his voice choked with sadness.
Yours,
Pano
PS:
In a society based on rice as a living staple of victual is a rather sobering experience to deal with Nuclear Energy’s fallout.
