Field study
Former and current students of the Japanese Agricultural Training Program, along with Big Bend instructors and local dignitaries, gathered to celebrate 60 years of the exchange program Monday.
JOEL MARTIN/COLUMBIA BASIN HERALD
Takashi Yoshikawa, executive director of the Japanese Agricultural Exchange Council in Tokyo, speaks Monday about the desperate need for farmers and improved agriculture in Japan.
JOEL MARTIN/COLUMBIA BASIN HERALD
Takuo Hashizume, one of the first JATP trainees, shows his passport and U.S. draft card from his time studying with the program in 1966.
JOEL MARTIN/COLUMBIA BASIN HERALD
Attendees help themselves to a buffet Monday at the 60-year celebration of the Japan Agricultural Training Program at Big Bend Community College Monday.
JOEL MARTIN/COLUMBIA BASIN HERALD
Trainee Koto Kokizoe thanks the JATP organizers for the education he is getting through the program. Kokizoe is one of 31 students spending a year and a half in the U.S. learning American farming methods.
JOEL MARTIN/COLUMBIA BASIN HERALD
“Eighty percent of the population lives on 20 percent of the land, and only about 11 percent of the land is farmable. (Japan’s) square mileage is equal to California, but it has very limited plateaus. Everything else is the sharpest, high, unfarmable, unlivable mountains. So, they need to focus on doing more with less.” — JATP director Larry Rimple
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