| Popis: |
The theme of this paper is reconstruction of local food systems in Fukushima. To advance recovering industries of food and agriculture, it is considered to be essential not only to restore agriculture, but to rebuild local food systems linking from the stages of the agriculture, processing, distribution, and to the last stage of con- sumption. In Fukushima, the "Fukushima Soybean Project (FSP)" has been developed since 1998. It is a project in which farmers, farmers' unions, soybean processors and consumer groups have collaborated, processed locally produced soybeans, and supplied them to residents of the prefecture. In spite of huge damages incurred by the Great East Japan Earthquake and the subsequent nuclear disaster, the project continues with efforts of each actor such as producers, processors and cooperatives. This article therefore focused on the actions of the FSP after the nuclear disaster, and by clarifying the difficulties and problems that they face as well as their efforts for recov- ery, examines a direction of reconstruction of local food systems in Fukushima. The main findings of this paper are summarized as follows. The prime characteristic of the FSP is a collab- oration between cooperatives. Through the supply of soy foods, agricultural cooperatives as producers' organi- zations, and consumers' cooperatives as consumers' organizations joined hand in hand to make a substantive organization and build a win-win business model, which enabled its sustained development. The trusting rela- tionship and social capital among farmers, food manufacturers and consumers nurtured through the efforts hap- pened to function effectively after the nuclear disaster. It emphatically shows that local food systems such as the FSP can exert an effect not only as a countermove to globalization as a problem that "gradually erodes regional societies", but also as a mechanism of "resilience" against the nuclear disaster as a "rapid and strong exogenous shock". |
