Fukushima 2011
Source: The Japan Times / AP

Fukushima farmers pray for cesium-free rice

FUKUSHIMA — Last year's crop is still sitting in storage and deemed unsafe to consume, but Toraaki Ogata is busy planting rows of seedlings at his rice paddies in the city of Fukushima, continuing his family's proud, six-generation history of farming and praying he will be able to sell this autumn's harvest.

Seeds of growth?: Toraaki Ogata, whose entire crop was
contaminated by radioactive fallout last year amid the nuclear crisis,
plants rice seedlings May 21 in the city of Fukushima. AP

His concerns are shared by several thousand farmers cultivating more than 7,000 hectares in Fukushima Prefecture, where a lot of rice exceeded government limits on radioactive cesium due to fallout from the Fukushima No. 1 plant meltdowns.

Agriculture is one of the prefecture's largest sectors, but if local farmers are to sell their rice this year they will have to submit it for inspection first — every last grain.

"All I can do is pray there will be no radiation" detected, Ogata, 58, said last week at his 1.5-hectare paddy, situated about 60 km from the ruined power station in the eastern part of the city, where fallout spread when the crisis began. "Through no fault of our own, the land of our ancestors has been defiled."

Although many farmers can't return to their land because it lies too close to the No. 1 plant, others have been given the go-ahead to resume rice farming — even though it may ultimately be too contaminated to ship.

Still, hopes are high in Fukushima that they will rise to the challenge and somehow manage to grow cesium-free rice — despite the huge quantities of radioactive fallout that contaminated soil last year.