Japanese Farmers Markets
WorldFMC President Richard McCarthy met with farmers market leaders who attended the 2025 General Assembly in Rome at a pivotal Tokyo restaurant, Night Market. Co-owner and chef Chihiro Naito designs his menu around what is in season at the nearby flagship Aoyama Farmers Market that operates adjacent to the United Nations University campus in central Tokyo. This market serves as an incubator for Japan’s emerging farmers market leaders (who go on to establish additional independent farmers markets). The lunch brought together food journalist and Yamagata Farmers Market creator, Kaede Sakai of Kyoto; Zushi-based Chie Nishimura, owner of Farm Canning, an innovative business that addresses food waste; and farmer and farmers market developer, Yusuke Tanaka, of Tokyo.
Kuni
The symposium is the first in Japan since the book was published in 2021. Organized by the Mayor’s Office of the City of Joetsu and the Japan NPO Center (for Non Profit Organizations), the event was attended by over 60 local civil society, government, and agricultural leaders to learn how the experience to develop farmers markets and the Joetsu model (the focus of the book, Kuni) of Regional Management Organizations (RMOs) can teach one another. One is devoted to commercial infrastructure that brings urban and rural together. The other unites the governance of peri-urban communities by filling in gaps in providing social protection to vulnerable communities, services once provided for by the local government. Since commercial urban-rural relations rests at the heart of the RMO, conversations occurred on fertile ground. Kuni co-author and founder of the RMO, Tsuyoshi Sekihara, stressed the importance of entrepreneurial models for rural sustainability in the face of decreasing public resources. This struck a chord with WorldFMC President Richard McCarthy, since the farmers markets are creatures of social enterprise that also address important social protection needs.
Kuni: A Japanese Vision and Practice for Urban-Rural Reconnection is available in English from North Atlantic Books and in Italian from Edizione Mediterraneanee.
