[H-CG31] [EJ] Battles of soil scientists for recapturing Fukushima land from Nuclear Power Plant accident.

[HCG31-01] Challenges of Agricultural land Remediation and Renewal of Agriculture in Iitate Village by a collaboration between scholar and NPO

*Masaru Mizoguchi¹ (1.Graduate school of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo)

Keywords:Fukushima, Iitate Village, collaboration, soil remediation, agriculture, forest

The accident at TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, which occurred in March 2011, became an unprecedented nuclear disaster. As a result, the forests, agricultural lands and oceans were contaminated extensively by radioactive cesium. In Iitate Village, Fukushima Prefecture, where evacuation continued after the nuclear power plant accident, decontamination work was carried out with thousands of workers for villagers’ return in the spring of 2017.
The authors entered the village three months after the nuclear accident and have tested several ways of agricultural revitalization by developing farmland decontamination methods that farmers can clean up by themselves with collaboration of local farmers, NPO members and researchers. As a result, the rice harvested in the test field passed the official inspection of Fukushima Prefecture in 2014. Despite many efforts of local people, we have not yet succeeded to dispel the anxieties of publics who mistrust that Fukushima's agricultural crops might contain radioactive cesium. Such a so called “harmful rumor” prevents from regenerating local agriculture. In this paper, we review our challenges of agricultural land remediation and renewal of agriculture by a collaboration between scholar and NPO, and propose the scenario of rural resurrection of Iitate village.