Right after our anniversary I went to Brazil to see our coffee project and our tree planting environmental project. At the same time, this was going to be my first visit to the Amazon area. There were a couple reasons why I wanted to visit the Amazon.

San Paolo is the city in Brazil where we have a Shumei Center. Belem is the entrance city into the Amazon. About 200 kilometers from Belem, along the Amazon river, is a town call Tome Acu which was developed by Japanese immigrants 80 years ago. This was the town I focused on visiting. Has anyone here ever been to the Amazon? No. I was really looking forward to this visit.

The Amazon is a huge river that you can see from the air when flying in. It was raining when I arrived but I really enjoyed the tropical climate in the Amazon area. There were many juices and ice creams sold there which were made from the local tropical fruits. I visited the market and crab happened to be in season so I enjoyed a meal. I wandered around the market place and saw many kinds of fruits and vegetables. The avocados were huge, there were cacao, bananas, passion fruit and noni juice made from noni fruit, which is very expensive juice. There were Brazil nuts, peppers, fish from the Amazon river and shrimp.

The main reason why I visited Tome Acu was for Miho Museum. At the Miho Museum we have two restaurants. In one of the restaurants we serve Japanese meals as well as sandwiches and some Western style meals. The visitors that come to Miho Museum come from all around the world. We like to share Shumei Natural Agriculture products and produce at the museum restaurant so that people can experience Natural Agriculture. We try to create the menus with as much Natural Agriculture ingredients as possible. There were two items we use that are not grown using Natural Agriculture. One was olive oil because we cannot produce that in Japan. I knew the olive oil in Italy was most excellent so I kept asking Italian members to please bring Natural Agriculture olive oil from Italy to share at Miho Museum with people from around the world. We serve bread at the Museum and that was one reason to start the Shumei Natural Agriculture wheat farm in Alberta Canada. That began our wheat production and at the same time we shared the message of Natural Agriculture with the people in Canada and North America. The olive oil we receive from Italy is called Podere Middolla and actually I will be visiting there again next week. This lady, Antonella committed her entire grove of olive trees using the Natural Agriculture principle. This year for the first time, Natural Agriculture olive oil came to Japan and I also shared the olive oil here in Crestone two months ago.

The second item we did not have that was Natural Agriculture was black pepper. I didn’t know where exactly they grew black pepper or how it was produced. I had no idea. Last year in September, I was stuck in London for two weeks on my way to Zambia because I got sick. One of the Japanese members brought me a book to read which was a story about Japanese immigrants who have been in the Amazon for the last 80 years. I was reading this book and it was a fascinating story. Before WWII they immigrated to the Amazon area when the Amazon jungles were opened up. Their intension was to grow cacao but that failed. They needed to eat so they at least had to grow rice and it kept expanding from there. It was very difficult for them because of their new environment and climate along with malaria and other tropical diseases that hit them but somehow they survived. Then after WWII, in the 1950’s, black pepper was brought in from southeast Asia and it grew pretty well. At the same time, the price of black pepper soared internationally. So these farmers ended up making quite a lot of money. That was the story about this book that I read.

I thought to myself, Oh, the Japanese community in Tome Acu are growing black pepper. But I hesitated to visit since I really did not have a good reason to go. To just go visit after all the suffering they went through then finally finding a way to survive by growing black pepper and then here comes someone from Japan saying, “Hi, can I have Natural Agriculture black pepper”. I could not do that. I had to wait for the appropriate time, the right moment.

But the story in this book was 40 years ago and I did not know what has happened since that time. Last year Brazil celebrated the 100th anniversary of Japanese immigrants and related to that event there were many cities in Japan broadcasting documentaries. I was watching one of these TV programs when I found out that the pepper production had failed because of disease. At that time the people in the Japanese community had many of their younger generation go to Japan to work and send money back to their hometown.

After seeing this, I thought maybe it could be possible to do something with Natural Agriculture. Then I saw another story which was about the second or maybe third generation of Japanese Brazilians who started the principle of agro-forestry instead of mono-cropping black pepper as they had before. As they produced various kinds of agriculture products, at the same time they were helping to bring back the Amazon forest. That was a wonderful project and I really wanted to learn more. This also was a perfect fit with the principal of Shumei Natural Agriculture. So I decided, yes, this is the time to see what is going on. That is why I went to the Amazon.

From Belem, I took a 5 hour bus ride, same distance as from Denver to Crestone. On the way across the Amazon river, which was a huge quiet river, it truly was rainforest and then we finally arrived at Tome Acu. The total population was around 50,000 with the Japanese descendants being only about 2000; although they owned most of the land in this area since they had became huge large scale farmers. Many Brazilians had left the city to come and work for the farms in this area.

The town, Tome Acu, acquired it’s name because a man called Tome lived across the river where there was a local village. Tome was the head of this village and he was big and strong. Acu means big and strong so he was called Tome Acu and that is how the town got it’s name.

The year 1929 was when the first Japanese descendants arrived to the area. There is a school in this town built by the Japanese immigrants which is still used today. In those days they lived in very humble dwellings for at least 30 to 40 years. When the black pepper became a large income crop they built a building for the Agriculture Cooperative Cooperatives and in this building was a huge safe. Mr. Sakaguchi, who is the chairman of the cooperatives, said in those days they did not have a bank in the town and when they had such a huge income they had no place to hold their money. So they decided to buy this huge safe and rolls of bills filled this safe until it could hold no more. There were 17 board members at this time and each member would bring home rolls of bills and store them in their homes. That was how much money they made at that time. Even though, as time has passed, and the homes got older and new people came in you can still feel the feeling of those days. I was told that black pepper is called Pimenta in Portuguese and that these homes were called Pimenta built mansions. Some of these homes have a Japanese style to them, some have a Western style but there are many huge homes which were built at that time.

Mr. Yamada is one of the major people written about in the book I read. When he came to live here he brought his first son with him, whom at the time was only one year old. Now his son is 83 years old and still living here. This coming August they will celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Japanese immigration.

In the 1950’s and 60’s the entire rainforest surrounding Tome Acu was cut down and black pepper was planted. Many more immigrants continued to arrive in Tome Acu and planted more and more black pepper. Eventually in the 1970’s the black pepper plants were all killed off by disease. The son of Mr. Sakaguchi is now the chairman of the agriculture cooperatives. Mr. Sakaguchi committed to change his way of growing agriculture and he learned directly from the Amazon forest itself. As he did so it helped bring the forest back to it’s original rain forest state. In one way it seemed like he was repaying the forest for his previous way of practicing agriculture where he had cut down all the trees.

There was a lot of corruption there. In the 50’s a lot of trees were cut down and burned then turned into ranches for raising cattle. Today it is more popular to cut down the rain forest and grow soybeans. So a lot of the rainforest is now huge flat growing fields. Last year the grain price was sky high worldwide so in developing countries especially they suffered a lot.

Brazil said, ‘Brazil’s answer to global hunger’, In recent years Brazil has become the world’s pantry. The top exporter of soy, sugar, orange juice, coffee, beef and poultry. And it’s a growing producer of corn and rice. Last year it exported $58 billion dollars in farm products including $11 billion dollars worth of soy. But a ? share of that bounty comes from areas that were once rainforest or savannah and many farmers believe expanding production and profits will require clearing even more land.

So even today trees are still being cut down. Now with satellite they can see where trees are being cut and burned and immediately the government responds to deal with those illegal actions. The people who are still cutting down trees have become wise to this satellite observation and what they do is wait for the rainy season since the clouds create a covering. The Japanese government has now developed a technique where they can pick up activity even under cloud cover. The Japanese government has decided to share this technology, free of charge, with other governments who may also be interested in using it. So now the Japanese government is very active in the Amazon area helping to eliminate the cutting down of trees. Also because of the agro-forestry movement to bring back the forest this has been a very focused goal.

In one sense the Japanese government has imported so many trees from Brazil in the past, so I’m not sure if this is a good thing or not, but at least they are trying to help. I would like to show you a short clip on the agro-forestry technique. The reason the first generation failed in growing cacao is because cacao was all they planted. Mr. Sakaguichi’s father carefully studied why they failed. The reason he found was that cacao plants need shade, about 40% shade, in order to grow well. So he planted banana trees which grow quickly, can be harvested in the second year and could also provide shade to the cacao plants. Next to the banana and cacao they also planted black pepper. Now it was no longer just a mono-culture crop. The agro-forestry also provided assistance in creating many diversified insects and plants who can help each other. They grow very well in this environment. In between these plants they plant larger trees for the long term and these trees produce more tropical fruits and nuts and eventually it creates a forest. Now this has actually become a forest and at the same time underneath the canopy a lot of cacao production is going on. So for many years farmers will have good production and what used to be only a black pepper plantation has now become a forest after 35 years.

Among this forest there are now 80 types of tropical fruits growing such as noni, cacao, a Brazil nut to create oil from and other tropical fruits. There is one gentleman, Mr Kanagano, who appears in the video who also began growing using the agro-forestry technique. He found that many locals would come and take his produce as his crops reached their harvest time. The locals didn’t seem to understand that it was not the right thing to do; they just assumed it was food to eat. So he explained to them, “Did you plant these crops?”, “Are you taking care of these crops?’ and “When harvest comes you all just take it home and I end up with nothing.” Hundreds of people just came and helped themselves. So he thought to himself, how can I help them? They themselves are very small scale farmers with maybe one or two hectors of land. So he helped them to plant their own agro-forestry farms. He showed them how to grow this way and by teaching them how to take care of these plants, when they had a good harvest they were very happy. So instead of saying, do not pick my harvest, he showed them how to grow and tend their own crops. He is now taking care of 5000 local farmers. Between the 200 Japanese descendants and over 5000 local people they are all working together to bring the Amazon rainforest back. So that is their project. When their fruits are harvested they bring them to the juice factory and the products are shipped to the U.S. and Japan.

Mr. Sakaguichi has allowed us the use of about 1 hector of land (2.5 acres) which his father took care of for about 10 years and that they haven’t touched since. It is like a wild jungle but still cacao and black pepper are growing there. So he committed to growing on this piece of land using the Natural Agriculture principle. Next month they will harvest cacao and pepper and towards the end of this year we will have the first Natural Agriculture pepper in Miho Museum. Many fruits are growing on this piece of land along with cacao and different varieties of black pepper. These different types of pepper are all mixed together to be used for cooking. When it is harvested, it is fermented then dried, bagged and finally shipped to Japan. This will be the beginning of Shumei working in the Amazon area. I am happy for the opportunity to really learn from the local community and the Amazon people and share what we really want to do with the Natural Agriculture principle. I don’t know what will happen from here and how the project will flourish since this is a very small piece of land for them but at least this one farmer has committed and it is a beginning. Please pray for them and pray for us. Thank you very much.