Great strawberry in Tohoku March 11th 16:57
Large sweet strawberries ripe red.
It is one of my favorite fruits.
I heard that there are amazing strawberry farmers in Tohoku, so I went to the site.
What kind of strawberry is it?
(Economics Department Reporter Yosuke Ikegawa)
In the "center" in the basement of the department store
"Depachika" of the department store "Isetan" in Shinjuku, Tokyo.
The strawberry was set up in the center of the fruit department along with high-class strawberries such as "Marihime" from Wakayama and "Aso Koyuki" from Kumamoto.
"MIGAKI-ICHIGO" (Migaki strawberry).
The shape is a beautiful inverted triangle.
Each grain is carefully packaged.
The highest price is 8640 yen including tax for 12 pieces.
It is not a price that you can buy with a light feeling.
Mr. Ishikawa, Isetan Shinjuku
"Migaki strawberry is attracting a lot of attention with new methods such as giving a sense of luxury by individually wrapping. New high-class varieties are being sold one after another every year, but Migaki strawberry has many fixed fans. , A stable and popular brand. It is an indispensable product in the sales floor. "
Cultivation of strawberries with the latest technology
This strawberry is from Yamamoto Town, Miyagi Prefecture.
Agricultural venture "GRA" is produced.
In late February, I visited a local house and talked to the president, Daiki Iwasa (43).
It was cold outside, but the room temperature in the house was kept between 15 and 20 degrees Celsius, and it was hot when I was wearing my jacket.
The house is automatically controlled for temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide concentration, and daylight hours.
It is a system that creates a database of know-how and experience that we have heard in detail from local veteran farmers who have been making strawberries for 40 years.
Mr. Iwasa
"Cultivation of strawberries is not uniform nationwide. The climate and environment are completely different between Kyushu and Tohoku, and the cultivation methods are also different. With the power of the system, high-quality strawberries that only local veterans could do I wanted to make it possible for anyone to grow. "
What you can do in your hometown
Yamamoto Town is Mr. Iwasa's hometown.
The reason for starting strawberry cultivation was the Great East Japan Earthquake.
At that time, he was 33 years old.
He ran an IT venture in Tokyo.
Mr. Iwasa
"10 years ago, when I saw the appearance of my hometown that had changed, my sense of values changed drastically. There is no point in reconstruction just to restore my hometown, which had begun to decline before the earthquake. When I thought about aiming to be the best in Japan and the best in the world, I thought I could do it with local specialty strawberries. "
Challenge the common sense of strawberry cultivation
After returning to his hometown, he rented a farmland damaged by the tsunami, built a house, and learned how to grow strawberries from scratch.
Agriculture is a complete amateur.
That is why I was often surprised by the "common sense of strawberry production."
For example, the following story.
"Many strawberries in the store are not ripe."
Strawberries usually take 3 to 5 days from picking by the producer to reaching the consumer.
This is because it is transported to the consumption area through agricultural cooperatives and markets.
In the meantime, it was customary to harvest while the fruits were hard so that they wouldn't get worse.
After picking, ripening turns red, but does not increase sweetness.
"I want to deliver sweet strawberries to consumers like when picking strawberries," said
Mr. Iwasa, who started shipping ripe strawberries.
Strawberries that were picked and sent directly to the store became popular because of their "different sweetness."
Even if an amateur does it normally, he cannot win the game
What kind of image does a brand have?
Tochigi's "Tochiotome" and Saga's "Sagahonoka" are famous, but these are the names of the varieties.
Mr. Iwasa sold strawberries of a certain size and color as a brand called "Migaki Strawberries" regardless of the variety.
Five varieties such as "Tochiotome" and "Mouiko" that bear big and sweet fruits have been rotated so that high-quality strawberries can be shipped stably for a long period from November to May.
Mr. Iwasa
"I can't win the game even if an amateur does it normally. I thought that if I could make a model of success even if it was small, I would have a chance."
Experience value "raise" by sharing failures
Mr. Iwasa is currently making friends.
We are generously sharing the hard-developed greenhouse cultivation system with enthusiastic new farmers.
Mr. Iwasa
"It takes 21 months for the so-called PDCA (plan-do-check-act) cycle to complete one cycle, unlike digital harvesting in the IT world. Only one company did it. Then, the speed of improvement is slow. Therefore, I thought that it would be better for many management bodies to carry out farming on a collective basis. Share information on how much strawberries were harvested today and what the sugar content was. If you do, you can grow at a good tempo. "
If you are alone, there is a limit to the speed of growth.
Sharing as many successful and unsuccessful experiences as possible will speed things up.
A simple calculation means that if you have two people, you will have twice as much experience, and if you have three people, you will have three times as much experience.
Thirteen people who learned how to make strawberries under Mr. Iwasa are now starting to grow high-quality strawberries in various places.
One of them, Toshifumi Takahashi (44), says:
Mr. Takahashi
"Listen to friends and devise fertilizer methods and humidity. We can work hard with each other, so we are motivated."
He told me that there is a good competition.
I want to make the area more attractive than before the earthquake.
Mr. Iwasa's strawberry cultivation started in 2011 with two small houses.
Including 13 companions, it expanded to 6.6 hectares, which is about 130 times larger.
It sells to 280 stores nationwide, including department stores and pastry shops, and the sales of the entire group amounted to about 1 billion yen.
In addition to production, we started a directly managed cafe in Tokyo in 2017.
It sells sweets made from strawberries.
Furthermore, with the aim of expanding overseas, trial production has also begun locally in India and Canada.
“I think that“ reconstruction ”is to make the area more attractive than before the earthquake,” said
Mr. Iwasa.
Economics Department Reporter
Yosuke Ikekawa
Joined the station in 2002.
Current affiliation after working at Sendai station, Yamagata station, etc.