A group of Japanese organic food professionals are visiting Lawrence this week as part of an exchange program to learn new ways of increasing support and interest in local farmers and their homegrown food.

Called the Global Partners for Local Organic Foods, the exchange program sends a team of 10 professionals each from Kansas and Saitama, Japan, for 10 days to explore organic food distribution and learn techniques for improving their community back home.

In Tokyo, the Kansas group visited a large farm where local residents had small plots of land and learned how to grow vegetables on their own either as a hobby or for health benefits. Patricia Graham, co-director of the project and adjunct research associate at the Center for Eastern Asian Studies, said the exchange project worked to promote new growers and change people’s eating habits, and to encourage students to lobby their schools and their living areas to serve organic food.

The visiting Japanese group will hold a cooking demonstration June 27 at the downtown Farmers Market using local food. Chizuko Sato, translator for the group, said the Japan group members planned to prepare a type of sushi popular in Japanese homes.

Graham said she organized the program in cooperation with Dan Nagengast, co-director for the Kansas team director of the Kansas Rural Center, and the Japan chapter of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements.

Graham said the Kansas group hoped the Japanese visit would get people more excited about local organic food in a different way than they had before.

The Kansas group, composed of various Kansas organic food professionals, traveled to Saitama, Japan May 18-27, to explore the local farms. The Kansas team also visited local businesses such as a brewery and a bio-gas plant. Nagengast said the bio-gas plant made its own energy from decomposing animal waste product.

Located near Tokyo, Saitama is similar in population to Kansas and has a small progressive city named Ogawamachi that’s similar in size to Lawrence. Graham said the team visited Ogawamachi because it’s a farming community that has become the model for sustainable farming in Japan.

Scott Allegrucci, director of the Great Plains Alliance for Clean Energy and member of the Kansas team, said he was interested to see local and commercial agricultural farming happening on very small parcels of land. Allegrucci said the U.S. had the view that a business model had to be big to be commercially viable.

“I think there’s a perception in Kansas that you can’t make money as an organic grower or as a local grower,” Allegrucci said. “That’s its just a hobby.”

Nagengast said the experience opened his eyes to the possibilities for Lawrence’s local food economy, from serving organic food in school lunch rooms to adopting earth-friendly Japanese farming principles.

Graham said she thought there was a large interest in Lawrence for organic food, except people still thought of it as expensive. Graham said the challenge for students was to understand that it is not always the wisest choice to buy the cheapest food.

“For the consumer, the cost of the vegetable is higher but they don’t realize the health potential from organic food,” Graham said.

Joseph Winters, Frederick, Md., junior, said he didn’t really have the money to buy organic food or the time to prepare a meal with organic products. Winters said that if organic food were cheaper or as cheap as non-organic products at the store, he would consider buying it.

“When I’m in school, I just want to eat something that’s quick and easy,” Winters said.

Katherine Kelly, farmer and Executive Director of Kansas City Center for Urban Agriculture, said there had been a big increase in the number of young adults getting into agriculture in the last 12 years. Kelly said she and the other Kansas group members hoped to develop a young farmers exchange program out of this Japanese visit.

The Japanese group will be visiting farms in Douglas County, Kansas City and the Flint Hills as well as local businesses such as the Community Mercantile, 901 S. Iowa St., Wheatfields, 904 Vermont St., and Local Burger, 714 Vermont St.

— — Edited by Steph Schneider