Fukushima farming hard row to hoe

[xchrom]

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120215f1.html


Nuked earth: Homes lie abandoned and farmland untended April 20 in Okuma, inside the exclusion zone and just 1 km from the wrecked No. 1 nuclear plant, in Fukushima Prefecture. ROB GILHOOLY

When Takahiro Nagakura set off for distant Okayama two years ago, his plan was to complete his degree at the prefecture's agricultural university and then return to Fukushima and work his family's peach orchard.

His plans, however, went awry last March 11.

"My father wanted me to study in Okayama Prefecture because of its advanced fruit-growing techniques," said Nagakura, 19, who will graduate in March. "I always intended to go back, but he told me there's no point."

The Nagakura farm in the city of Fukushima is one of many of the prefecture's 80,000 farms affected by the nuclear disaster triggered by last March's earthquake and tsunami, contaminating land and crippling the ¥250 billion local agricultural sector.

[DCKit]

1. Who's to say that radioactive Cesium, Strontium and some random Plutonium...

aren't highly beneficial to the cultivation of peaches?

To read some DU posters comments, you'd think ingestion of these substances was better than taking vitamins - at worst, totally neutral.