It was a warm February afternoon when I arrived at Japan's ume hotspot. A place where thousands of smallholder farmers from two towns, Minabe and Tanabe, collectively cultivate over 50% of the country’s total ume harvest.
I could tell we were getting close. The delicate fragrance of ume blossoms scented the crisp spring air. Finally, out of the passenger's side window, I saw how time and human hands had woven together pink orchards, green forests, and rice terraces and strewn them across the rocky vertical landscape.
I was somewhere not only beautiful but brimming with potent lessons. Here, people have been shaping ecosystems for centuries to proliferate biodiversity while creating meaningful livelihoods and cultural heritage.
I was in Japan to learn more about the country's beverages. Initially, I planned my visit to Minabe and Tanabe to learn more about umeshu (ume infused liquor) production. However, immediately it became evident that this place had a lot more to offer.
The second part of this blog series is structured around three lessons that I think Japan’s ume hotspot can teach the world: 1. how biodiversity can help us overcome unfavorable conditions; 2. how to deeply celebrate place; and 3. how inclusive business models sustain people and nature.
1. Maintaining and utilizing biodiversity to overcome unfavorable conditions
Japan is an archipelago that borders the Earth's largest continent and sits on the brink of a 35,000-foot-deep ocean trench. Colliding tectonic plates in this area of the world are responsible for the country's mountains and volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, and hot springs. The overall topography leaves limited areas of terrain favorable for development and agriculture. Today those areas bear the overwhelming imprint of populous modern cities.
Since time immoral people living on Japan's islands had to adapt to verticality since more than 80% of the country's land area is covered by mountains. As a result, many landscapes command special attention for how they have accommodated the topography. For example, Shiroyone Senmaida in Ishikawa Prefecture is a place where people carved 1004 individual rice paddies into steep hills sitting above a rocky coast. The result is terraced rice fields that glisten in the morning and evening because they reflect the light of both sunrise and sunset.
In Wakayama, rocky and steeply pitched slopes have made large-scale rice farming impossible. Soils crumble easily, and erosion is a constant threat. So the local inhabitants, starting over 400 years ago, turned to ume to overcome the challenging terrain. In doing so, they also created a dynamic and biodiverse land-use system that supports both people and nature [1].
A low-resolution snapshot of the system would show three main interlocking zones—ridges, slopes, and lowlands.
The ridges contain broad-leaved evergreen forests. The forest provides a habitat for animals and insects while helping to regulate water supply. In addition, these forests offer wood that people use to produce a special type of charcoal known as Kishu Bincohtan, which people regard as the world's finest fuel for grilling foods like eel.
The slopes house ume orchards. The roots of the trees stabilize the rocky ground and help to prevent slope collapse. Ume production sustains the local economy and creates meaningful livelihood options for thousands of farmers.
The lowlands provide space for cultivating a broad range of other agricultural products, including fruits, vegetables, and flowers. For example, people grow rice, broccoli, and cabbage outside in terraced fields. Nearby greenhouses contain flowers and crops like strawberries, lettuces, and peas. Additionally, people tend numerous citrus varieties in the lowlands. Production of mixed fruit and vegetable crops supports food and nutrition security, helps mitigate risk, and provides additional channels for generating income.
The habitat diversity found in the ridges, slopes, and lowlands form a dynamic system that is greater than the sum of its parts. The forested ridges and ume-covered slopes work together to provide a nearly year-round supply of nectar and pollen for Japanese honeybees (Apis cerana japonica). The Japanese honeybee is a critical pollinator for many crops, including ume. Early in the year, when snow is still covering the ground, ume blossoms provide a valuable first source of nectar for the bees. After that, as the year continues to unfold, the sequential flowering of trees and shrubs in nearby forests allows the bees to continue to feast on nectar and pollen until the winter.
The vegetation that covers both the ridges and the slopes also helps to maintain watershed services. The tree canopies that surround the ume orchards intercept and slow down rainfall. The forest floor then acts like a giant sponge absorbing and filtering water, sustaining stream flow, and recharging aquifers. Ume tree roots hold the rocky slopes together while grasses flourish between the trees protecting the topsoil. This vegetative barrier prevents erosion and keeps water supplies downstream clean. If the slopes were bare, the rainwater runoff would cause siltation and degrade water quality downstream [2].
Generations of farmers have developed and passed down place-based knowledge about how to care for the local landscape mosaic. This rich body of experience has generated time-tested practices that balance the supply of ecosystem services with production. For example, people manage the forests with a technique known as coppicing. Have you walked by a tree stump and saw several smaller tree shoots growing out of it? Many hardwood tree species will regrow after being cut down. People harness the natural tendency of a tree to regenerate by only harvesting the young tree stems from the stump. In a few years, new tree stems grow up. This method of forest management allows people to harvest wood for charcoal production indefinitely without cutting down and replanting new trees [3].
The ume orchards are also living reservoirs of genetic diversity. Centuries of ume cultivation have led to a wide array of unique varieties. The large plump Nanko variety is most widespread. However, farmers told me that they continue to cultivate many other varieties. According to scientists, there are around 500 varieties of ume in the world. The Wakayama Fruit Tree Experiment Station in Minabe has collected 121 of these varieties for their gene bank. The genetic resources conserved in the orchards (in situ) and in the gene bank (ex situ) provide a critical source of raw material to develop new varieties for future conditions [4].
The land-use system demonstrates how people can practice agriculture under constraints while utilizing local ecological knowledge to pursue both productivity and sustainability. Through maintaining and leveraging biodiversity at habitat, species, and genetic levels, farmers can accommodate the unfavorable terrain. In doing so, they generate ecosystem services like landslide prevention, watershed conservation, pollination, and nutrient replenishment, which in turn increases their resilience against disasters.
2. The celebration of place offers us portals to potential futures
I believe that decisions about land use are just as imperative as keeping fossil fuels in the ground. We often think about environmental problems arising from the burning of carbon or the loss of biomass. However, we also need to be aware of the issues that come from the profound etching that we are doing to the surface of the earth, as we flatten hills to build cities and suburbs, shave down coastlines down to construct ports, and dredge and dam waterways for transport, energy, and flood control. While not all negative, these activities can act as a powerful homogenizing force rendering distinct ecosystems increasingly similar.
The environmental historian Donald Worster in The Disorder of History pointed out that the study of the past can help to reveal models of successful adaptation that we can glean insight from for today [5]. However, an analysis of both past and present societies yields examples of how people have managed to fit themselves into landscapes and seascapes for long periods while being less destructive to the biota around them. One common thread weaving these far-flung societies together is their deep respect and celebration of place.
Japan’s ume hotspot is one of these examples. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UNFAO) recognizes Minabe and Tanabe as a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System (GIAHS). The towns share the title because they both contain outstandingly beautiful landscapes that combine agricultural biodiversity, resilient ecosystems, and cultural heritage [6].
Unlike other heritage sites or protected areas that attempt to preserve a landscape or monument statically, GIAHS are living and evolving environments. These are places where farmers, fisherfolk, herders, and forest people have been in long-term positive reciprocity with their local ecosystems. The result is a multitude of complex and remarkable land-use systems where the line between nature and culture is visibly blurred [7].
Our planet boasts many similar places where humans have accumulated deep place-based knowledge about how to carry out meaningful livelihoods while respecting and even improving upon natural resources. However, currently, the UNFAO has only provided this formal designation to 62 sites in 22 countries [8, 9].
Formally known as the Minabe-Tenabe Ume System, the site offers a model of improving soil conditions, conserving water resources, and proliferating biodiversity, all while producing goods and services for people. We desperately need to study such templates that outline how to cultivate more mutually beneficial entanglements between humans and the natural world.
3. Inclusive business models sustain people and nature
The Minabe-Tenabe Ume System also teaches us about how inclusive business models can complement and sustain biodiverse land-use systems. The idea that scaling up agricultural production can only be achieved through consolidation and intensification is a misperception.
In Japan, a cooperative or co-op business model is the backbone of the ume supply chain. Co-ops are jointly owned business enterprises where people pool resources or production to acquire better outcomes than by going alone.
In Minabe and Tanabe, individual farmers tend between 100 to 1000 trees on plots of land between one and six hectares large. Three hectares is roughly the size of a football field. The co-op JA Kinan provides a structure for thousands of farmers to come together and pool their resources to take advantage of volume discounts and bring down the cost of inputs like fertilizers, pesticides, and farm machinery.
JA Kinan also provides logistical help by acting as an integrator. The co-op owns infrastructure like a fleet of trucks, gas stations, a processing plant, and a commercial grocery store. The co-op collects, processes, markets, and distributes fresh ume and ume value-added products like umeboshi and ume-flavored snack foods. Because JA Kinan aggregates ume harvests from relatively small plots of land, farmers can more easily reach larger wholesale markets and earn higher wages.
Co-ops have two notable characteristics: power in numbers and exceptional organizational strength. The model is inherently inclusive because it brings people together. Each member is a shareholder. Co-ops reduce individual risk and create a culture of shared productivity and problem-solving. Co-ops can also help to rebalance power and dilute the concentration of wealth.
The main pathway that the co-op business model helps to sustain biodiverse landscapes is by providing viable livelihood opportunities for small-scale farmers. In 2021, the researchers Ricciardi et al. published in the journal of Nature Sustainability the results of a meta-analysis investigating the relationship between farm size and production, profitability, biodiversity, and greenhouse gas emotions. The researchers synthesized 50 years of evidence from a broad geographic range of agricultural systems. They found that small-scale farms frequently contain greater crop diversity and higher levels of non-crop biodiversity than larger farms [10].
Here are some of the reasons why:
• Increase in the edge-to-field ratio: If you take a larger farm and break it up into smaller plots, there is a high chance that you would increase field edges. Often farmers will cultivate non-crop plants at the borders of their fields for runoff and erosion control or wind protection. These edges form a habitat network that provides refuge for insects and wildlife.
• Landscape composition: Small-farm-dominated landscapes also tend to harbor diverse land cover types. Forests, wetlands, grasslands, and other ecosystem types are preserved among smaller fields. Thus, independently managed smaller fields and farms can lead to more heterogeneous landscapes.
• Farmers grow more diversity: Small-scale farmers often will plant a greater diversity of crops for reasons like improved nutrition, to mitigate risk, or to simply have more options to sell at markets.
Thus, the inclusive, cooperative model of JA Kinan is essential for helping thousands of small-scale rural farmers reach the larger domestic and international markets required for them to earn a viable livelihood. In turn, empowering small-holder farmers sustains greater landscape diversity.
Reflections on ume:
Ume represents a crop that has few cultural equivalents. I can't think of another plant that we cultivate for both its edible fruit and ornamental flower. This species is an exemplar of a botanical ameliorant or a plant that significantly enriches the human experience. The beauty of its blossoms has inspired poets, artists, emperors, and ordinary people for millennia. Its fruit, a highly nourishing traditional food in many cultures, also contains a wide array of compounds that heal sickness and promote longevity.
In central Japan, ume is the protagonist in a story about how humans have leveraged biodiversity to overcome adversity. This fits, considering the plant is a symbol of resilience since it blossoms zealously in the depths of winter. The opportunity to visit Minabe and Tanabe shifted my worldview. The experience provided me with a first-hand example of extraordinarily positive reciprocity between people, plants, and ecosystems—examples of which seem increasingly challenging to locate in our modern world.
The farmers living in Japan's ume hotspot inherited, and continue to improve upon, a body of knowledge, practices, and beliefs that allows them to celebrate the intricate and intimate details of place in ways that promote social and ecological wellbeing. In addition, JA Kinan's inclusive business model empowers smallholder farmers who critically important to sustaining a biodiverse land mosaic in the face of global pressures.
We often cast the benefits that the living world gifts to us as 'goods' or 'services' to consume—a one-way flow. However, less often do we consider how that flow is bi-directional. Ume helps us lift the veil and get a clearer picture of the spectrum of potential interactions humans can have with individual plants and entire ecosystems. Ume shows us what is possible.
Acknowledgements:
Many thanks to the team from JA Kinan for their gracious hospitality. We deeply appreciate you introducing us to farmers, taking us on a tour of the umeboshi factory, allowing us to participate in the activities at the ume blossom festival, and for the many wonderful conversations over meals and umeshu that we shared together. We can’t wait to see you all again the next time we visit Japan.
References:
1. Hara, Y., Oki, S., Uchiyama, Y., Ito, K., Tani, Y., Naito, A., & Sampei, Y. (2021). Plant Diversity in the Dynamic Mosaic Landscape of an Agricultural Heritage System: The Minabe-Tanabe Ume System. Land, 10(6), 559.
2. Hara, Y., Sampei, Y., & Tanaka, H. 2018. The Minabe-Tanabe Ume System: Linkage of Landscape Units by Locals. Sustainability, 10(4), 1079.
3. Niles, D. 2020. The Charcoal Forest: Sensing the Agencies of Nature. Forms of Experienced Environments: Questioning Relations between Humans, Aesthetics, and Sciences, 141.
8. Koohafkan, P., & Cruz, M. J. D. 2011. Conservation and adaptive management of globally important agricultural heritage systems (GIAHS). Journal of Resources and Ecology, 2(1), 22-28.
9. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) Official Website. 2021. Available online: http://www.fao.org/giahs/giahsaroundtheworld/en/ (accessed in 2021).
10. Ricciardi, V., Mehrabi, Z., Wittman, H. et al. 2021. Higher yields and more biodiversity on smaller farms. Nat Sustain 4, 651–657.
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