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| AP Photo |
FUKUSHIMA, Japan (AP) — Last year’s crop sits
in storage, deemed unsafe to eat, but Toraaki Ogata is back at his rice
paddies, driving his tractor trailing neat rows of seedlings. He’s living up to
his family’s proud, six-generation history of rice farming, and praying that
this time his harvest will not have too much radiation to sell.
That conflict is shared by several thousand
farmers in more than 7,000 hectares (17,000 acres) of Fukushima, where some of
last year’s harvest exceeded government safety standards because of radiation
released when the March 2011 tsunami set off the world’s second-worst nuclear
accident.
For their rice to be sold, it will have to be
tested — every grain of it.
“All I can do is pray there will be no
radiation,” Ogata, 58, said last week, wiping his sweat during a break in his
1.5-hectare paddy 60 kilometers (35 miles) from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear
plant. “It’s not our fault at all, but the land of our ancestors has been
defiled.”
Rice farming is almost sacred in rural Japan,
and the government protects farmers with tight restrictions on imports. Many
farmers are too close to the nuclear disaster to return to the fields, but
others have gotten the go-ahead, even with the risk their harvests may end up
being too radiated to ship.
Hopes are high in this major agricultural
northeastern prefecture (state) that farmers will meet the unprecedented
challenge of producing safe-to-eat rice in contaminated soil.
Following orders from the government, they
have sprinkled zeolite, a pebble-like material that traps radioactive cesium,
and added fertilizer with potassium to help block radiation absorption. That
work is part of the 100 billion yen ($1.3 billion) Tokyo has allocated for
decontamination efforts this year.
There had been no time for that last year.
Tens of thousands of bags of rice from that harvest were too radiated to be
sold. The government bought those crops, which sit in giant mounds in storage.
Rice planting has been banned in the most
contaminated areas, but the government allowed it at some farms in areas that
produced contaminated rice last year, including Ogata’s. After the October
harvest, their rice will be run through special machines that can detect the
tiniest speck of radiation.
Ogata is filled with uncertainty. Though the
government recently set up a system to buy and destroy his crop from last year,
he has no assurances that it will do so again if this year’s rice can’t be
eaten.
He also doesn’t know which experts to
believe. Scientists often come to Fukushima to discuss radiation at
neighborhood meetings, but some say there will be no health effects at all,
while others say tens of thousands may get sick.
Radiation is expected to decline year by
year. But Ogata and other farmers acknowledge they are in for a long haul.
Japan has a safety limit of radiation
exposure at 1 millisievert per year, although some areas in Fukushima measure
higher at about 20 millisieverts. A 20-kilometer (12-mile) no-go zone was set
around the nuclear plant, displacing some 100,000 people.
Right next to the no-go zone, in Minami Soma,
135 farms have been granted special permission to plant rice as an experiment
but on the condition that all rice, regardless of radiation levels, will be
destroyed.
“We couldn’t even plant last year. We are doing
everything we can as a whole town so we will be growing rice next year,” said
Yukio Nishi, a Minami Soma agricultural cooperative official.
The government toughened its restrictions on
radiation in rice and other food from April to 100 becquerels a kilogram (2
pounds) from the emergency 500 becquerels set in March last year. The limits
are lower for milk, baby food and drinking water.
Medical experts say risks from low-dose
radiation can’t be ruled out, but it may be impossible to prove whether a person
got cancer from radiation or something else.
Exposure is cumulative and differs among
individuals, depending on size and age, diet and habits. Certain foods, such as
mushrooms and bamboo shoots, tend to be high in radiation. And children are
more susceptible to radiation-related sicknesses.
“The balance that the government is now
trying to strike is between allowing people to stay in the Fukushima area and
recover their lives, and keeping the rest of Japan happy about buying food,”
said Edward Lazo, who advises Fukushima as a radiation expert at the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Nuclear Energy Agency.
“And that’s a really difficult job.”
Christopher Clement, an expert at the
International Commission on Radiological Protection, a global nonprofit
authority on radiation health, says the food standards in Fukushima are safe.
They are lower than the maximums set in Europe after Chernobyl.
Still, people across Japan — and even in
Fukushima — are shunning food grown here, though Takeshi Takagi, a manager at
the York Benimaru supermarket chain, said customers are gradually returning to
locally grown produce.
York Benimaru has clearly labeled shelves for
Fukushima-grown food, and bright banners encouraging shoppers to support local
farmers. But some pass right by.
“We have our rice shipped from outside
Fukushima,” said Tomohiko Hashimoto, a 30-year-old house-husband, strolling his
infant son through the aisles. “We’re careful about what the mother eats, too.
She is breastfeeding.”
Last year’s sales of Fukushima vegetables and
fruit on the Tokyo wholesale market were 20 percent lower than the 2010 total,
according to Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market data. Masataka Kase,
spokesman for Tokyo Seika Co., a major wholesaler, said the drop came from crop
damage from the disaster, shipment bans for radiation and consumer fears about
Fukushima.
Ogata won’t need to sell his rice to
skeptics. He plans to sell some of his 10,000 kilograms (22,000 pounds) of rice
direct to customers he has cultivated for years, families who live in the area.
The rest he will sell to a local farming cooperative that distributes to
corporate buyers, such as restaurants, that are more willing to buy Fukushima
rice.
A handful of farmers are giving up on growing
rice. Some are switching to flowers, which don’t require radiation checks.
Others are suing Tokyo Electric Power Co., the utility that operates Fukushima
Dai-ichi, for damages.
Fukushima farmer Shoichi Watanabe is angry he
even has to worry about radiation.
“See how peaceful this place is,” he said,
pointing to paddies filled with gently croaking frogs. “I want to say at the
top of my lungs that we would not be going through all this suffering — if only
Tokyo Electric had done its job right.”
