Toshimasa Arai
CEO, Saitama Fukko Group

Introduction

I would like people with disabilities and others who have difficulty in adapting to society to play a role in society by working, and for society to build the environment needed for this. Moreover, I aim to continue creating total support taking into consideration not only working but a person’s entire life, always retaining my spirit of tackling challenges, and expanding connections which lead to employment and work opportunities for disabled people.

Saitama Fukko Co., Ltd. (hereinafter, “our company”) began to be aware of social firms around the time we started farming, in 2004. Until then, we had taken on subcontracting work from various businesses, but these companies moved overseas or mechanized simple tasks, so the number of orders declined and the work itself disappeared. In this situation, we thought that agriculture was a route which would remain open because it was work that could not be mechanized, involving tasks requiring human workers; moreover, there was a shortage of prospective workers. We therefore decided to head in that direction.

In 2007, we successfully obtained the first authorization as an agricultural production corporation given to a company from another industry in Saitama Prefecture. Over the fifteen years since, we have joined forces with people with disabilities and others who find it hard to work in society and worked together, mainly in agriculture. This circle has now expanded and become a social firm, and helping the social firm philosophy to evolve with Japan as its starting point has become a new mission and endeavour for Saitama Fukko Group.

In this article, I will introduce our company’s initiatives as a business in the local community which is aiming for the world as a Japanese social firm.

Our company’s aims and a description of our business

Our company does not think about social firms solely in terms of employing people who find it hard to work, but rather as total welfare, born out of the social context in which the social firm emerged and the background of action taken by people who believed that this context was not acceptable. This stance is one which our company has held from the outset, and it is the essence of a social firm as people.

The members who work at our company include various people who find it hard to live and work in society, including disabled people, single mothers, people with early onset dementia, people from Kanagawa Medical Juvenile Reformatory, NEETs, people who have withdrawn from society, and elderly people. It is not that we targeted these people from the start; as a result of responding to various requests for help, on the basis that if we turned people away, what we were doing would not be welfare, we ended up by accepting cases which were difficult from a welfare standpoint.

Our business is fundamentally to carry out our role as a disability welfare services provider to the utmost. We currently run farms which act as places to work in Saitama, Gunma, and Nagano Prefectures through an “agriculture-welfare partnership” system. While serving as a social resource employing people who find it hard to work in society, our company is growing into an organisation which contributes to society by resolving social issues and aims for the world together with all our members. The young generation has now begun to get involved, with the host family format coming into being.

In our business, we engage in agriculture through a support for continuous employment type B workshop and by employing disabled people. Based on the philosophy of “working as core members of the labour force within society”, we are developing three forms of agriculture-welfare partnerships, according to the type of disability. The first is hydroponics, in which the same work continues day after day. We supply food and drinks-related businesses, wholesalers, and so on. The second is open-field cultivation, in which the work changes day by day according to changes in the weather. All the production process, including the use of tractors and weed cutters and the spreading of plastic sheets, is done by the disabled members alone, and we provide ingredients such as onions and Chinese cabbages to manufacturers such as Ishii Shokuhin and Tokai Pickling. The third is the cultivation of green onion seedlings. At present, we cultivate seedlings for 300 farmers, with disabled members supporting these farmers by taking on this agricultural work. Our company’s initiatives do not stop at simply supporting people with disabilities; instead, in our business, our disabled members support local farmers and contribute to community activities and society through agriculture.

Receipt of multiple awards

Moreover, since not everyone can work, we came up with the idea of olive cultivation in 2004 so that people could live the slow life. This was the creation of a place for such people to be, and started from the belief that we needed to change the concept of working as part of “green care”. Preserving this belief together, we have produced hand-made olive oil which won a gold prize from among entries from around the world at Olive Japan 2016. We are now producing olive oil, olive leaf powder, and olive herb tea in partnership with olive farmers.

Our work on agricultural-welfare partnerships in our social firm has been recognized, and we have received letters of appreciation from the directors of probation offices. In 2019, we were awarded the Yamazaki Memorial Agricultural Award in recognition of our community-wide agriculture and our social firm initiative. In 2020, we received a Noufuku Award of Excellence from the Agriculture-Welfare Partnership Consortium.

We have also received other recognition for our activities in which we have contributed to local communities together with our disabled members. In 2018, we organized the Greater Kumagaya Organic Festa, the first time for us to help with a social-type event together with our disabled members. This was not a nationwide, fancy event: rather, as the hosts, we and our disabled members were able to show what the SDGs truly are through “organic connections between people” which do not exclude anyone, and to run a unique event.

At this event, the Ministry of the Environment and the executive committee delivered on the Start-up Company Organic Declaration, making the start of society’s shift towards organic farming a reality. Our presence at the Organic Festa as people from the welfare field enabled us to show the 45,000 visitors that “people” are the most important thing and that “organic connections between these people” are what “organic” means.

New initiatives

There is a community-wide initiative which arose from this: the cultivation of naturally farmed rice as a whole community, in which our company has brought together education, welfare, companies, and local farmers to cultivate land through an agriculture-welfare partnership and support the bid to become a Nationally Important Agricultural Heritage System which was Kumagaya City’s aim. On 17 January 2023, we received the happy news of the announcement that Kumagaya had been designated as a Nationally Important Agricultural Heritage System. There is also an initiative which has been taking place with a public elementary school for four years now. We cultivate naturally farmed rice together and, at the end of the festival to celebrate the harvest, the 300 students and our members eat rice balls together. The number of organisations involved is growing every year.

As the producers, together with the students and their teachers, our social firm, two welfare facilities (employment support projects), a special subsidiary company (employment of disabled people), publicly-listed companies which support us by buying our products, and local companies, we have generated a “social farm” style as an entire community, generating our children’s future through an agriculture-welfare partnership.

We also have further plans for an initiative together with Japan Agriculture and talks of partnerships with olive orchards and with Province of Tuscany, Italy, as well as plans for educational tours to observe the process of the social firm initiative itself; but limitations on space prevent me from introducing them here. Together with people who find work hard, we will move ahead with activities to expand our initiatives for the next generation, creating new social firms through this tourism, increasing the number of people involved with these initiatives, and maintaining and bringing prosperity to the local communities from which agricultural workers are disappearing.

Image of a slow food tour with children

Aiming to become a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System together with our fellow workers