Menno Village farms with Christian values
SAPPORO, Japan — Raymond Epp and Akiko Aratani are just trying to farm in a way that makes sense.
At Menno Village, a community they’re part of, they have learned the wisdom of traditional Japanese agriculture. For one, they make charcoal out of rice hulls, used with rice straw and bacteria from the forest in the chicken house for a naturally heated floor that does not smell. They also have experimented with spreading rice bran and cull soybeans in fields as a form of weed control.
It’s not only how they plant and harvest their organic food that’s attracted attention in Japan. It’s how community, family and church become part of that process.
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In November, the Sapporo Consumer’s Cooperative awarded them a prize for their work to nurture local food systems. In the past three years, three award-winning, Japanese documentaries have helped tell Menno Village’s story. Epp often speaks at universities, churches and consumer and farmer organizations about food safety issues and the impact of agricultural policy decisions on farmers and rural communities.
In January, Epp and Aratani, with their four boys, joined Mennonite Mission Network as mission associates.
What they do as farmers and Christians are connected.
“There are all kinds of possibilities for the church to be involved in witnessing to Christ in the midst of the political struggles over food, land and the ownership of life.” Epp said. “It is around the table that we share food. Practicing hospitality is a way to welcome the stranger.”
Epp said the table around which Christians celebrate the Lord’s Supper is significant spiritually while reminding us that there is enough, but not too much, food for all.
“We practice our faith before a watching world. We need to find ways to put flesh to the meaning of gospel,” Epp said.
In 1994, the Epps spent the first summer of their marriage trying to farm in Henderson, Neb. He’d grown up there and wanted to return home to farm and to write about an agriculture system that is destroying the weave of life.
But Aratani broke her leg in a farm accident that spring. She worked with a broken leg, but mounting medical bills and the challenges of trying to start a small organic farm bankrupted them.
The couple heard of a group of six families from Sapporo, Japan, who wanted to start Menno Village, a farm-based community with a different vision of economics and church. Excited about working with others on new visions for economy and church, Epp and Aratani asked to be included.
Agriculture was changing in Japan, as it has in the United States, but farms were small, and there was still “a community of memory — a memory of good farming and good food and the importance of maintaining good relationships amongst your neighbors,” Epp said.
Menno Village culled pieces from the 4,000-year farming history of Japan. Less than 100 years ago, 70 percent of Japanese were farmers who lived within walking distance of their field. The farmers were called were “hyakusho” — which literally means the growers of 100 things.
They grew a wide variety of crops, often mixed together in fields, first feeding their families and then selling leftover goods in the market, Epp told New Farm magazine in 2004. Today, market sales buy the family food.
As farm debt becomes an increasing problem, the population of farmers is aging, and, as in the United States, industrial, large-scale agriculture is taking over. Cities and towns are becoming more disconnected. Young people are leaving villages and going to urban areas.
Epp believes that understanding how one is connected to place is central to working at societal problems. Modernization is about cutting people free from traditional beliefs and practices, but Epp said human beings are created by God to be social beings, discovering who we are in relating to one another in community.
At Menno Village, Epp and Aratani are public critics of technological change and are involved in public discussions on biotechnology and economic and agricultural policy. They are concerned first and foremost about the impact on human freedom and the possibility of building community. Their public voice carries weight because they are living together in community and seeking to connect urban and rural while doing justice, stewarding the land and protecting human health.
“They started the farm intending to value the land, water and air and the connection between the farm and the people who eat their produce,” said Toshi Aratani, Akiko’s mother who spends three days a week volunteering at Menno Village.
Restaurants love the potatoes that come from Menno Village. They sell food to about 80 families through a community-supported agriculture project. Epp calls the recipients of vegetables, eggs and rice, “Menno Village People.”
Dale Hess, a U.S. friend of the Epps who has visited the farm, said they have brought community-supported agriculture back to Japan and are using an appropriate mix of traditional and more modern techniques to make the farm work.
“They are bringing a farm back to life,” he said.
When Epp arrived, he didn’t know anything about growing rice, but the neighbors taught him, according to Toshi Aratani.
Those neighbors have supported Epp and Aratani and as they’ve taken stands against genetically modified organisms in farming and other issues.
“Now they are quite well understood [in] their stand as Christians and recognized,” Toshi Aratani said. “When they were awarded a prize last autumn, their neighbors held a party to congratulate them. They were very happy that their Christian stand is appreciated.”
Menno Village is helping reconnect urban and rural people by using food and conversation about how it’s raised and transported, challenging those who believe that technology and biotechnology will save Japan’s agriculture.
“We believe that through Jesus the world has already been saved. We need the faith or the audacity to believe that world into being,” Epp said. “Likewise, urbanized people and young people, those who no longer have connections to their traditional communities, are longing to find ways to connect to other people and to place. Menno Village is such a place.”
Ray Epp is a member of Bethesda Mennonite Church, Henderson, Neb. Aratani is a member of Yuai Mennonite Church, Sapporoshi, Japan.
