Hokkaido

It was raining heavily in Tokyo when I began my Tuesday morning. I caught a taxi to Hanada Airport which is the domestic airport in Tokyo. We sat on the plane for two hours before taking off because of the weather, so we were late arriving in Sapporo. We were met at the airport by Mr. Harada with Hokuren Trading. We had lunch at the airport in an Italian restaurant. I had pizza. Next we got into Mr. Harada’s car and headed to the Hidaka area. This area is full of Thoroughbred race horse farms and the landscape resembles many areas of the U.S. There is also a noticeable difference in the size of the vehicles on Hokkaido, they are more normal sized compared to the U.S. Everything here is more familiar.

Our first stop of the day was Hokkaido Hidaka Milk Products Co., Ltd. We met with several members of the staff including the company president. They gave us an overview of the dairy industry in the area. Agriculture in this area started about 100 years ago when an American specialist came to the area and instructed the local residents on some production methods. As I had previously indicated Japan is only 39% self sufficient in terms of producing the food that the people eat. On the other hand Hokkaido is 190% self sufficient, which shows how important Hokkaido agriculture is to the rest of Japan. Dairy is an important industry on Hokkaido. There are 8,310 dairy farms with 836,000 cows on this island. About 400 of those farms bring their milk to this processing plant. The Hidaka area is southeast of Sapporo and very close to the ocean, so they don’t get as much snow as the rest of Hokkaido. The peak of farming on Hokkaido was in the 1960’s but now there are only one quarter of the farms that there were then. Because the average age of Japanese farmers is very high the future will likely see several small farms working together or combining. This factory first started producing powdered milk in 1972 and it was purchased by its current parent company in 1987. The product line has expanded a great deal since then. In addition to powdered and liquid milk they currently produce fresh mozzarella cheese, several soft cheeses such as ricotta and mascarpone, butter, yogurt and yogurt drinks, a wide variety of canned drinks, long life products and they have canning agreements with other drink companies. They were the first to start producing fresh mozzarella in Japan and are very proud of it. I tried some and it is quite good. The variety of dairy products available in Japanese supermarkets is amazing. The company is currently exporting milk to Taiwan and Hong Kong. They have 130 employees and 8 billion JPY in annual sales. All of their products that I tried were really good and the factory was one of the cleanest I have ever seen. They have a lot number traceability system much like you might see in the U.S. Their lots might include the milk from up to 3 farms and consumers can call and request that information if they want, but almost none actually call.

Next we got into a car provided by the milk processing plant and drove to Kurimu Dairy Farm. This is one of the largest, if not the largest, farm in the area. In addition to owning 600 Holstein cows, with about 300 milking at a time, they also have 250 hectares of land where they produce corn silage and haylage to use in the dairy. This makes them a very large farm by Japan standards. We were told that they are 8 times larger than normal for the area. They have a 28 stall carousel parlor (pictured below). The cows walk in and ride around in a circle for about 20 minutes while they are milked and then walk out. Think carousel slide projector – I had never seen this kind of milking parlor before. An RFID tag on each cow links up with a computer to keep track of how much milk each cow is producing and a sensor around a leg monitors the cow’s condition. Feeding plans are based on this information and what stage of milk production the cow is in currently. Different groups of cows get different rations to maximize production. They milk 3 times a day and all of their cows are domestically bred. The average production per cow at the midday milking on that day was 39.8 kg. Their bacteria counts are very low compared to other farms on Hokkaido. They have a water treatment system that all water is run through before being released into the river. Also, they compost the manure and use it on their land as well as marketing it to other farmers. Almost all of their feed has to be imported including alfalfa hay as well as the grains. There were large square bales of alfalfa from Ellensburg, WA in his barn that cost 21500 JPY per 500 kg bale. It costs 720 JPY per day to feed each cow. His children are not involved with the operation but he does have several young people that work for him and he says there may be opportunities for them in the future.

We drove back to Sapporo and checked into the Hotel Monterey, which is a very impressive older hotel. I was very tired after a long day and went to bed early which is why this blog entry is a little overdue.