A rally and tractor demonstration billed as a "Reiwa peasant uprising" drew about 350 farmers, JA officials and consumer group members to Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, on Sunday, as organizers pressed for farm incomes that can sustain a living.
An executive committee of producers organized the event. It began in Tokyo in March 2025 and has since spread across the country. A chapter was formed in Ibaraki in September and has spent the time since preparing.
"Every year 3,000 farmers disappear, and we are in a serious crisis," Yoshiro Wakui, an organic farmer and co-chair of the committee, told the rally. "It is because they cannot earn an income they can live on." Keeping Japanese food on the table requires stable farm incomes, he said.
Co-chair Yutaka Akiyama, head of the JA Hitachi agricultural cooperative, raised the talks on lifting Japan's ban on fresh US potatoes. "I don't want to feed children curry made with imported potatoes," he said. "We will protect Japanese agriculture and food no matter what."
Twenty-eight tractors and light trucks then led the way as producers carrying banners and flags walked about 3 kilometers around Tsukuba Station.
Kazumi Kamaga, 73, who grows rice and vegetables in the city, and his wife Michie, 73, said typhoons and long rains in September flooded their fields and killed carrot seedlings. Rice prices have also fallen to about a third of last year's level, they said.
"For farmers, last year's rice price was the reasonable one," Kazumi Kamaga said. "People don't take up farming because you can't make money growing crops."
Consumers joined as well. A 45-year-old woman from the city who works as a shinkyu practitioner — a licensed practitioner of acupuncture and moxibustion — said she took part out of alarm at the conditions farmers face. "I thought joining the demonstration would deepen my own understanding," she said. "I hope it reaches other consumers too."