Farmers’ Livelihoods Wither in Japan’s Nuclear Crisis

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/30/world/asia/30farmers.html

If Japan’s leaders regard the collapse of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex as this nation’s greatest crisis in decades, Saichi Sato has a different perspective. From where he sits in this leafy village of 8,000 about 25 miles from Daiichi, he says, this is the greatest crisis in 400 years.

Mr. Sato, 59, is a 17th-generation family farmer, a proprietor of 14 acres of greenhouses and fields where he grows rice, tomatoes, spinach and other vegetables. Or did grow: Last week, the national government banned the sale of farm products not just from Towa, but also from a stretch of north-central Japan extending south almost to Tokyo, for fear that they had been tainted with radiation.

Already, Mr. Sato stands to lose a fifth of his income because of the ban. If the government cannot contain the Daiichi disaster, he could lose a farm that his family has tended since the 1600s.

“Even if it’s not safe, I need my fields for my work,” he said. “I have no other place to go. I don’t even want to think about escaping from my land.”
Here and elsewhere in Fukushima Prefecture, the region hit hardest by the nuclear crisis, farmers are worried about their future — and convinced, like Mr. Sato, that the government is not on their side.

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Will any farms survive? Any farmers?

This is just so tragic. I weep for what we are doing to this planet. Even the rich will not be able to escape the defiling of the planet. Will they wake up before their greed ravages everything?

and it could be me and my neighbors at any time.....