AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week, Mark writes: Like so many of my graying peers, I have part time parent care duties these days. Fortunately, my father has a girlfriend and two children besides me to take on the bulk of the responsibilities, and he is able to afford to live in a comfortable environment that accommodates his various disabilities. Unfortunately for me, that environment is in the retirement world of Delray Beach, Florida, where I found myself once again a few weeks ago. Taking a break from Dad one afternoon, I decided to check out the nearby Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens, for which I had seen a big directional sign on the way home from the airport. Visiting an institution dedicated to preserving Japanese culture seemed a fitting activity in a week still dominated by news of the disastrous damage done by the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear reactor breakdown in Northeastern Honshu, Japan. The contemplative mood inspired by the succession of gardens in various historical Japanese styles was reinforced, for me, by an exhibit in a small pavilion explaining the history of the Morikami. On display were blowups of excited local newspaper articles of 1904 and 1905, proclaiming the arrival of a colony of Japanese farmers, recruited by Jo Sakai, scion of a Samurai family who had just earned a business degree at New York University. These farmers planned to cultivate what would be new products for Florida, at a time before tourism and the retirement industry, when agriculture was virtually the only “industry.” They called their colony Yamato, an ancient name for Japan. The news articles made clear that, much as modern Americans marvel at the technical proficiency of the Japanese, our predecessors viewed them as horticultural wizards. Although there may well have been some in the local population who harbored racist resentments when the newcomers arrived, the tone of the articles was one of warm welcome to these farmers who were seen as able to “revolutionize” agriculture and develop the local economy.
As it turned out, the horticultural prowess of the Yamato colony farmers availed them little in the perennially trial and error business of agriculture. Clearing and cultivating the root encrusted, and (to my eyes) swampy virgin Florida land was incredibly arduous. They started by growing pineapples, only to find themselves hit by blight and then undercut by growers from Cuba. They tried to produce silk, but the mulberry trees, leaves of which are the sole diet of silk worms, did not thrive. They eventually turned to winter vegetable production for northern markets, taking advantage of a train stop in their community from which they could ship the produce. But their earnings were disappointing and they had to contend with growing anti-Asian prejudice that became prominent in the decade after the Yamato’s founding. In the first great Florida land boom of the 1920s, most of the 35 or so remaining members of the community sold their land at handsome prices and left. George Sukeji Morikami, who grew local crops and became a major fruit and vegetable wholesaler, ended up as the last remaining member of the colony, living reclusively in a trailer on his property. In the mid 1970s, Morikami, then in his 80s, donated his land to Palm Beach County to create a park memorializing the Yamato Colony.
The Yamato story has an eerie echo in a contemporary story I heard while in Florida on NPR’s Marketplace. A few years ago, Iowa State University recruited five Dutch families to come to Iowa and help revolutionize the dairy industry there by revitalizing family farms. Similar programs were established in other Midwestern states. The Dutch were chosen for recruitment because they were known for their industriousness as dairy farmers. The recruits sold their farms in Holland and invested in bigger, new facilities in Iowa. Their timing was most unfortunate. They were squeezed from both sides – by a drop in the price their milk fetched to levels not seen since the 1920s, and simultaneously with a dramatic increase in the cost of the grains they used to feed their cattle. The help in getting established they had been promised by Iowa State never materialized. In contrast to the Yamato Colony members’ fate, they were unfortunately not able to sell their land at a substantial profit. Some lost their entire life savings and two of the five have filed for bankruptcy. Overall, twenty Dutch farm families from the Midwest have returned to Holland, in the words of Marketplace, “ashamed, heartbroken and penniless.” Most people who farm, like us, hedge their bets. Our joke is that it takes a law firm, a kilim gallery and a travel business to support a farm. These occupations help maintain stability between the peaks and troughs endemic to agriculture. The stories of these farmers who committed everything to their ventures expecting to prosper, but whose high levels of skill and commitment were no match for the powerful forces of the market and nature, are a useful reminder of why it is such a good idea to proceed with caution. For the complete archive of past AgriCulture blogs, click here.
