We visited Koretomo Farm where the Koshihikiari rice served in our office cafeteria comes from! Koshihikiari is one of the highest quality rice brands in Japan.

Koretomo Farm produces very tasty rice and has been using our BTO product, a soil amendment based on a lactic acid fermented extract, for seven years. Our staff always enjoys heaping bowlfuls of his rice at lunchtime.

Mr. Eiichi Koretomo is the owner of Koretomo Farm who cultivates rice as well as bok choy (qing-geng-cai). 

The greenhouses for Bok choy are spacious beyond our expectation. Seeing the sunlight coming in through the plastic greenhouse roofs, we were astonished at the beautiful scenery of green and white: bright colored bok choy and the snow white ground cover. It gave us a very good impression. 

We were moved at the farm’s scale and cleanliness of the greenhouses for growing bok choy.

Mr. Koretomo explained to us that ever since he started using BTO, he has found less decoloration of leaves, rotting of crops and clubroot disease. He started using BTO because one of his friends operating a farm, who is a Yano Award winner, was using BTO. This award is given to a young grower who endeavored in development of agriculture and yielded good results. 

“The condition of the crop started to improve after the third to fourth harvest, so I stopped using BTO for a while to see its effect. Well, the situation reverted to how it used to be” he said with a laugh. He keeps up his hope that demands of his crops which are grown with lactic acid bacteria will increase more.

When we asked him about the best part of being a farmer, he answered in a relaxed manner “I can work as I like and I can spend a lot of time with my children!”

Despite his easygoing attitude, he has been more aware than anyone else about his challenges in improving unstable crop yields and keeping good relationships with neighbors who have only a weak perception of agriculture. 

He has overcome all these problems and kept working with high spirits. He keeps up not only his motivation to work but also physical health. He has also been taking our OM-X product for a long time for the maintenance of his health. 

We are so glad that our products can help both his work and health.