Urban Farming: Veggies with a view
都会で農場を経営する建築家の飯村一樹氏は、東京の屋上を緑豊かに。On the roof of a building in Omotesando overlooking the skyscrapers of Shinjuku, tomatoes and wild strawberries are flourishing, and meter-high beanstalks are starting to produce fat, green pods.
This incipient harvest is thanks to Kazuki Iimura, founder of Omotesando Farm, an urban farming project designed to utilize some of Tokyo’s most abundant open spaces: rooftops.
Iimura started Omotesando Farm last September, after the success of his first urban agriculture venture, Ginza Farm, where he turned an abandoned plot of land along a Ginza side street into a functioning rice paddy, complete with animals such as frogs and ducks that contribute to a healthy micro-ecosystem.
With that project coming to a close this fall, he’ll be focusing on building more rooftop gardens in Shibaura, near Shiodome, and on top of a shopping center in Yokohama.
Architect of a reinvigorated land
The 35-year-old Iimura comes from a family of farmers in Ibaraki but had never planned on becoming a farmer himself. A trained architect, he worked for several years in real estate. He became interested in urban farming while working on a city revitalization project in rural Japan.
“I wanted to do something that would reinvigorate the farming industry and the land itself,” he explains.
Urban farming is on the rise worldwide, particularly in North America, Europe, and other parts of Asia like China and India. Iimura says that the number of people learning to grow vegetables in Japan is increasing, but the main problem is the lack of available space.
The idea of creating rooftop gardens came to him when he viewed the Tokyo cityscape from the top of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building in Shinjuku.
“Looking at it from above, there’s nothing, just grey concrete,” he says.
A suitable spot
Repurposing that wasted space for farming seemed like the perfect solution. He immediately started researching suitable spots and found one in fashionable Omotesando, right next to the Paul Smith Boutique.
The landlord agreed to lease the rooftop after Iimura demonstrated that the rooftop gardens could be a profitable enterprise.
For ¥15,750 a month, renters get access to the water supply and a slim plot of dirt that can be shared by two people.
The majority of Omotesando Farm’s clients are young women who work nearby and drop in on the way home, or during lunchtime with friends.
Although the plots are small -- each of the 16 rectangles of soil measures around three square meters -- the system is more convenient than traveling outside of the city to grow herbs.
Most renters are farming neophytes, so Iimura provides a consulting service, where he and other farmers give advice and help maintain the plots. All of the vegetables are organic. No chemicals are added, and they use only natural fertilizers.
While Iimura doesn't think that urban agriculture can solve the problems of Japan’s alarmingly low self-sufficiency ratio, he believes that it may help.
“I think that people’s consciousness will change,” he says. “It may not have a huge effect, but it can have a positive one.”
Omotesando Farm, Jingu-mae 5-46-15, Shibuya-ku
