FOCUS: Consumers turn to local farmer's markets amid food scandals+

TOKYO, March 3 Kyodo -
Japanese consumers are increasingly visiting local farmer's markets to buy
groceries in the wake of a series of food scandals, accelerating a trend toward
''local production and consumption.''
Shoppers started lining up at 9:30 a.m. in front of a large retail outlet near
sprawling vegetable fields and rice paddies at the western edge of Kawasaki
city in Kanagawa Prefecture.
The number of customers increased to about 50 by five minutes before Farmers
Market Ceresamos under management of Japan Agricultural Cooperatives unlocked
its doors at 10 a.m. The number rises to more than 100 on Saturdays and
Sundays, causing congestion in the parking lot.
Such stores are enjoying strong popularity among consumers following successive
revelations of food-product scandals last year, including some originating in
China, which boosted consumer awareness of locally grown farm goods for local
consumption. There has been a store that has sold agricultural products worth
several billion yen a year in competition with supermarkets.
A housewife who is a regular customer from adjacent Tama city, Tokyo, said many
purchasers come in the morning because there are lots of fresh farm produce at
Ceresamos. On sale are such products as spinach and cabbages which were
harvested just hours before the store opened in the morning.
Ceresamos started business last April to become one of the marketplaces aimed
at dealing with goods shipped directly from farmers. Prices at such local
outlets like Ceresamos are not necessarily inexpensive compared with those at
supermarkets.
However, customers are apparently wary of food safety and make sure by checking
the bar codes bearing the names of farmers and places where vegetables and
fruits are grown. More than 300 farm households deliver their produce to
Ceresamos.
Permanent direct sales outlets are located in about 5,000 locations across
Japan with those affiliated with JA Cooperatives totaling about 2,000 and
another 3,000 related to entities partly funded by local governments and
farmers' groups, according to the JA General Research Institute. It also said
their yearly sales amount to 80 million yen to 100 million yen on average.
Large-scale retail outlets emerged in the second half of the 1970s at a time
when pollution problems became serious in Japan and the number surged following
the collapse of the bubble economy in the early 1990s.
Masayuki Yamamoto, chief researcher of the institute, said, ''Many consumers
began to doubt mass production and distribution.''
The rise of such outlets has brought about a change in the attitude of farmers
as many stores introduced a system of sending information daily to each farm
household supplier. A farmer who delivers his produce to Ceresamos said he
takes seriously what he should do to make his produce saleable.
It is all up to farmers themselves to decide products and prices handled by
direct outlets. Some of them check on the prices of goods sold by other farmers
and also the prices of products sold at supermarkets. Others rise to the
challenge of turning out new vegetables.
An official of JA Ceresa Kawasaki which operates Kawasaki Ceresamos said the
level of knowledge and awareness of direct sales varies according to farmers,
adding he has to keep close tabs on a variety of matters such as agrochemicals.
==Kyodo
2009-03-03 23:11:55