Outwitting Garbage

	A hotel worker puts food waste into a composter. (PANA)

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From Food to Fertilizer and Back

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Food waste is recycled into fertilizer, which helps grow rice and vegetables, which find their way back onto dinner tables. This kind of "food cycle" is becoming more widespread thanks to the Food Product Recycling Law, which went into effect in May 2001. Under the new law hotels, restaurants, supermarkets, and other businesses that deal with food have to recycle food waste. "Reduce, reuse, and recycle" are the principles guiding the effort to lessen the amount of garbage. Turning principles into results, however, is no easy task; those involved on the front lines of this battle find themselves searching for new and innovative ways to reduce garbage.

Prestigious Hotel Sells Fertilizer
The Palace Hotel in Tokyo is one of the city's oldest. It is also known as a pioneer for turning food waste into fertilizer and animal feed. The Palace Hotel began 10 years ago by recycling the chicken bones used in making the large amount of soup that it serves. By using a crusher and a biofermenter, the chicken bones were processed into material that could be used in pet food, an experiment that was a huge success and provided the motivation for future efforts. These days the majority of the 900 kilograms (1,980 pounds) of food waste--leftovers and pieces of meat and vegetables thrown away during cooking--produced by the hotel everyday are put into a high-speed composter. In 24 hours, the waste is compressed to one-sixth its original size and becomes organic fertilizer. In March 2001 the Palace began selling its fertilizer to nearby farmers at the price of ¥100 ($0.83 at ¥120 to the dollar) for 500 grams (1.1 pounds). The rice and vegetables grown using this fertilizer make their way back into food served at the hotel. What made this system possible is the thorough separation of garbage at all businesses before it is collected.

Large Companies Join in Recycling Effort
Even in the distribution sector companies are actively undertaking similar measures. Daiei (site in Japanese only), operator of the nation's largest chain of supermarkets, passes on 10 tons of food waste produced each day at its processing center to disposal facilities in neighboring prefectures. The waste is made into fertilizer, and the vegetables grown with it end up on the shelves of Daiei supermarkets as a special brand, sales of which reached ¥140 million ($1.17 million) last year. Lawson, a convenience store chain, is carrying out a similar program. Box lunches and vegetables whose freshness date has expired are picked up by a company that disposes of the food and processes it into fertilizer. This fertilizer is then sold to contracted farmers who grow vegetables. The new vegetables are used as ingredients for box lunches again. A growing number of shops, and even department stores like Seibu and Keio, are reducing garbage and creating fertilizer by installing driers and composters to handle their food waste.

Food makers are also addressing the issue on a grand scale. Soy sauce maker Kikkoman, working jointly with a paper manufacturer, devised a method of combining with paper the 27,000 tons of waste generated in the production of soy sauce, making products like letter paper. There are even some fertilizer manufacturers that collect the compost that gyudon (beef bowl) chains and the like have created from food waste and remove oil harmful to crops before they sell it to farmers as fertilizer.

Toward a Recycling Society
The amount of garbage produced is increasing every year, and Japan's current annual figure is 500 million tons. Of this amount, 100 million tons comprise food and other general waste produced by homes and various kinds of businesses. In many cities garbage is sorted into burnable waste, unburnable waste, recyclable waste, and oversized waste before it is collected and then disposed of by local governments. Some areas require residents to sort their recyclable waste even further, separating glass bottles, aluminum cans, newspapers, and PET bottles.

In addition to these measures to reduce garbage, the new Food Product Recycling Law has made it mandatory for businesses that handle food, such as food makers and distributors, to recycle food waste as a way of promoting the reduction and reuse of garbage.

While homes are exempt under the current law, a number of communities and local governments have begun moves to promote the voluntary recycling of food waste. One of the communities attracting a lot of attention for this is Nagai City, Yamagata Prefecture. Twice a week the residents of that town take food waste that has been drained of water to a garbage dump, where they put the waste in special collection buckets. Over half of the 5,000 households in the city are taking part, and 1,500 tons of food waste are recycled annually. This waste is turned into compost using city facilities and is then sold to farmers through the local agricultural cooperative. The crops grown using this fertilizer are sold within Nagai. The city began this program in 1997, and the amount of food waste produced every year has since fallen by more than 30%.

Simple machines that can be used to dispose of garbage at home are also beginning to become more common. Through efforts like this, Japan is moving forward one step at a time toward making a recycling society a reality.

(Web-Japan, November 30, 200)

Farming Rice With Duck

	Aigamo ducks swimming in a rice paddy. Organic Growing Method Spreads Across Asia October 22, 2002 A method of rice farming that relies on ducks to eat insects and weeds has been in the news recently. The "aigamo method" of growing rice was developed in 1989 by Takao Furuno, a farmer in Fukuoka Prefecture, and it allows for the production of healthy and delicious rice while relying on less labor than previous methods. From its beginnings in Japan, it has made its way to rice-growing countries like South Korea, China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand, and even to faraway Iran. Rice grown using this method is more resistant to typhoons and other problems, and some farmers who have begun using it have called it a "gift from God." Organic Rice The aigamo is a cross-breed of wild and domestic ducks. The aigamo method for growing rice involves releasing aigamo ducklings into a rice paddy about one or two weeks after the seedlings have been planted. Between 15 and 20 of these birds are needed for every 1,000 square meters of farmland. Also necessary is a shelter where the ducklings can rest and take refuge from rain. In order to protect them from dogs, cats, weasels, and crows, the field should be surrounded by an electric fence and protected from above by fishing line. The ducklings help the rice seedlings grow by eating both insects and weeds that get in the way. The farmer can then grow the rice without using pesticide or herbicide. He or she is also free from the back-breaking work of bending over to pull weeds by hand. The ducklings' droppings become an important source of natural fertilizer. In addition, they stir up the soil in the rice paddy with their feet and bills, a process that increases the oxygen content of the soil, making it more nutritious for the seedlings. And when it comes time to harvest the rice in the fall, the ducks have grown fat and can be sold for meat. By allowing farmers to grow crops organically and also raise ducks to sell as meat, the aigamo method really does kill two birds with one stone.
	Helping Farmers Financially In countries across Asia, where people are reflecting on the overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, the aigamo method of raising healthy and delicious rice is attracting attention, and many farmers have begun to use it. This method is beneficial from a cost standpoint in that farmers will no longer have to purchase expensive chemical fertilizers or pesticides. And the fact that extra money can be made when the fully grown ducks are sold off is another factor that many find appealing. The aigamo is a cross between the kamo (wild duck) and the ahiru (domestic duck). Because kamo are migratory, it was believed that using ahiru would be better for agriculture. According to some experts, though, aigamo have come to be used because they produce a large amount of tasty meat and are easier to obtain than ahiru. Furuno, the pioneer of the aigamo method of growing rice, has visited Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam in an effort to introduce the method. New technology and new ideas are being tried in various areas, and Japan has begun to receive feedback from the farmers themselves.

Making Farmwork Easier

Autonomous Rice Transplanter Uses GPS System

Rice is the staple food of Japan and the nation's most important crop, and it is planted all across the country at the beginning of summer. Unlike in the past, this is rarely done by hand these days, with rice transplanters that are ridden by people in broad use. But the environment surrounding Japanese rice production is changing as the number of people working in agriculture declines. In order to adapt to this new reality, scientists and engineers are working closely to develop rice planters that can function with minimal operation by human.

©National Agricultural Research Center

How It Works

The autonomous rice transplanter developed by the National Agricultural Research Center works, and it uses the Global Positioning System (GPS) in combination with an onboard position sensor. To be able to plant rice without a human operator onboard, the machine has to recognize the location and shape of the field. GPS is used for this, with the operator entering data for the four corners of the paddy into the machine's computer prior to planting.

However, the GPS signal sent from satellites to receivers mounted on automobiles and the like on the Earth's surface has generally a margin of error of about 10 meters due to such factors as moisture in the air. For this reason, the autonomous rice transplanter also uses a mobile phone to receive extremely precise electronic base-point data provided by the Geographical Survey Institute; this data has a margin of error of only 2 cm. The operator then decides on a route for the machine to take based on the coordinates of the four corners of the rice field and inputs that data into the computer. After the program is set, the autonomous rice transplanter is activated by remote control, and the machine moves into the rice field on its own and begins planting.

©National Agricultural Research Center

Multiple Innovations
Because a rice field has undulations, the machine at times will tilt to the left or right or to the front or back as accordingly, giving rise to the possibility that it may stray from its programmed route. In order to compensate for this, the computer applies data from the onboard position sensor to recalculate how far off it is from the set route. The computer then recalibrates and controls the drive wheels to minimize drift. Drift from the set route can be kept to less than 10 cm. The machine slows down and stops planting automatically as getting close to the edge of the rice field. It then makes a U-turn, carefully avoiding the seedlings it has just planted, and sets out on a new path.

Another remarkable innovation is the method how the machine actually plants seedlings. Previous models took several 30 cm by 60 cm nursery boxes containing rice seedlings and planted them in rows in the soil. This meant, however, that the machines would often need to be replenished when they reached the edge of the rice field. With the new type, rather than using nursery boxes, the autonomous rice transplanter uses "long-mat seedlings," which have been cultivated on a 6-meter-long mat made of unwoven cloth. Loaded with a wound bundle of six such mats, the autonomous rice transplanter can plant seedlings over an area of 300 square meters without being replenished.In addition to the autonomous rice transplanter, the National Agricultural Research Center is developing an unmanned combine and a field-surveying robot, with the ultimate aim of automating all aspects of work in rice fields in the future. (Web-Japan,October 2008)

A Safe Way To Protect Crops

The World's First Lactobacillus Pesticide

In recent years, both consumers and farmers have increasingly turned against the use of chemical pesticides out of awareness and concern about their safety and environmental impact. To address these concerns, Japanese researchers recently developed the world's first pesticides that use lactobacillus bacteria instead of harmful chemicals. This follows previous successes in developing pesticides that use microorganisms like Bacillus natto and soft rot bacteria.

The soil in both pictures contains a bacterial pathogen. The spinach sprouts in the top picture are growing from seeds that were soaked in liquefied lactobacillus, while the sprouts in the bottom picture come from untreated seeds. ©Kyoto Prefectural Institute of Agricultural Biotechnology

How Lactobacillus Pesticide Works

The lactobacillus used in the pesticides is selected from among the various types of lactobacillus that can be extracted and collected from yogurt, pickles, and other fermented foods, with specific varieties being chosen to protect crops from specific diseases. For example, spinach wilt is an infectious soil-borne disease caused by Fusarium fungi. Previously, the only effective means of dealing with it was considered to be disinfecting the soil with chemical pesticides. Now, though, the bacteria Pediococcus pentosaceus KMC05 can be utilized to contain an outbreak. KMC05 can also be used against Phyophthora capsici, a soil-borne infection caused by Phytophthora pathogens.

Lactobacillus plantarum WKB10, meanwhile, is even more effective than commercial pesticides in eradicating Pythium, the cause of mizuna damping-off, outbreaks of which are believed to have increased as a result of repeated cropping and year-round cultivation in greenhouses.

As for other soil-borne infections, SOK04, another type of lactobacillus, can be used to combat soft rot in Chinese cabbage. These lactobacillus pesticides are as effective or even slightly more effective than Biokeeper water-dispersable powder, a previously developed microorganism-based pesticide, and these results have been confirmed in infected fields in five prefectures around Japan. Tests have proved that these pesticides are effective in eradication of diseases either when sprayed or when seeds are soaked in them.

Toward Commercialization

The immediate goal is to commercialize lactobacillus pesticide to combat soft rot in Chinese cabbage, with the aim being to register the pesticide, establish a manufacturing method, and release the product to market within the next few years. As work continues to select promising lactobacillus pesticides that can prevent and eradicate other plant diseases, researchers are also looking beyond fermented foods and are extracting and collecting other kinds of lactobacillus from wild and cultivated plants.

The development of these lactobacillus pesticides was spurred by the Kyoto Prefectural Institute of Agricultural Biotechnology, which presented an exhibit on how lactobacillus can be used to control spinach wilt disease at the Agribusiness Creation Fair sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries. The institute then teamed up with Meiji Seika, a confectionery company with a track record in lactobacillus research and development, in a joint project with the aim of creating new pesticides. In order to commercialize these discoveries, it will be vital to shed light on the processes by which lactobacillus prevents disease. Kyoto Prefectural University is handling this task as the three parties continue their joint research.(July, 2008)