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sorbic
acid
asodium
anitrite
carcinogen
Vacuum-packing
1 transport
1 Preventive
●Germ
epidemic
110
1 arrogant
⑩ provqince
• irony
• deficit
11
⑩ feat
⑩ eastern
⑩ establishment
ソルビンの
酸
ナトリウム
亜硝酸
発がん物質。
真空パック
輸送
防止する
細菌
伝染病
傲慢な
地方
皮肉
赤字
功績
設立
東の
Date 11.16 火
●Silk-Road
●Harbin
●Khabarovsk
112
Amur
cargo
port
● suppose
●Pigsty
mumerous
シルクロード
ハルビン(都市名)
ハバロフスク(都市名)
アムール(都市名)
積み荷
港
しなければならない
豚小屋
多数の

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Comprehension
A
1 D
2. B
3. A
4E
5. C
B
QI
(a) attracted (Mutilizing (14) added (d) competing.
(e) places (f)solved (19) established
Q 2.3
C
1.③
2.4

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Lesson 8 Breakthroughs in Japanese Agribusiness
1 There is a new business model (that has been a focus of attention of farmers and
agricultural business.) Every year, more than 5,000 people, from farmers to
municipalities, visit Wagoen for inspection. Wagoen is a corporation. The company is
mainly composed of young farmers in Chiba Prefecture, and its gross revenue is over
five billion yen.
2 There are three successful features the visitors want to learn from Wagoen.) The
first one is their sales route. Most Japanese farmers cannot decide the prices of their
products, for they ship their products to Japan Agricultural Cooperatives (JA) or other
Resale markets, where others decide the prices.) So, when there is an excessive
supply of a product, farmers need to dispose of their products to control the price.
which
otherwise would be marked
arked down so much that they could not live on the income③This
pricing system, in combination with the difficulties of competing with imported food
products), has made it challenging for farmers to profit. To overcome this problem,
Wagoen purchases about fifty items of vegetables and fruits from about ninety member
QI.
farmers, and sells them directly to contract supermarkets and restaurants. By doing
契約
so, they can tailor their production to their customers' needs, which enables them to cut
強しい
costs greatly. In other words, having their own sales routes allows them to do
market-oriented business, which has been rare in agriculture most farmers grow what
向けの
they want without paying much attention to the markets.
3 Another feature is their own recycling system, (where they reuse waste from food
"We don't adopt any
: ssing and ranches as fertilizer) Moreover, methane gas produced during this
recycling process) is utilized for electricity and forklifts,
cutting-edge systems, but just follow the traditional way, in a more modern way.
Japanese farmers used to use the waste of cows and pigs as fertilizer by mixing it with
fallen leaves," Hirokazu Kiuchi, president of Wagoen, says. "All our existence depends
on the providence of nature. Japan is rich in nature with four seasons, which makes the
soil fertile. We just work in harmony with nature."
Q3
4 Traceability by which consumers can check the safety of the products) is the third
feature. Wagoen has a database of the farmers' fertilizers and pesticides to show to the
customers) and this has proved they can add additional value to their products if there
is consumer anxiety over safety.] Overseas markets are also being considered, and the
about

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company already has farms in Thailand,
and safe food will expand more and more.
and, for it believes the world markets for delicious
5 "Many Japanese see agriculture as an old industry, but the value of producing food
will never go down. People cannot live without food, and food is closely tied to health,"
Kiuchi claims. "Japanese agriculture has achieved high levels of efficiency,
productivity, and safety, and can contribute to the world with these."
6 Another outstanding/agricultural business/model (that business critics have paid
優れた
attention to is Hirata Farm in Sakata, Yamagata Prefecture. Kaichi Nitta and his son
run a successful corporation involved in stock farming processing, sales, and the food
service industry under the name of Hirata Farm, whose revenue is over sixteen billion
QT
yen.
7 Nitta handed over his ancestral paddies to his brother and started a piggery with
only two pigs in 1953. Like many farming industries, the pork market often collapses
depending on supply. From this he decided not to compete with other piggeries in
terms of price but in terms of quality. After years of trial and error, including
importing pigs from Europe, he succeeded in breeding a new type of pig, using a
Berkshire from
Landrace from the Netherlands, a Duroc from the U.S.A./ and a
Kagoshima to produce the renowned ternary pig called "Sangenton.)>
5%
that
8 In today's business, great emphasis is put on efficiency, but with Hirata Farm,
is not the case. They attach more importance to quality than to efficiency. While
most piggeries raise pigs for 180 days before shipping, they raise pigs that grow slowly
for about 200 days.) In addition, the pigs are not resilient to stress, so they need a
larger and cleaner space
ce (to live.) Surprisingly, more than 10 percent of their feed
consists of rice. This is how "the most expensive pork in Japan," (as they call it,) is
ように
produced.
9 The price of Hirata Farm's pork is reasonable considering its safety, as it is backed
ので支えられる
by quality assurance systems such as ISO and HACCP. The farm has a long history of
developing safe food products. Nowadays most people are concerned about food safety;
however, several decades ago, most people were not. When Seikatsu Club began to
demand safe food products,
ts, Nitta tried to meet the demand. He began working on
additive-free sausages in 1971. At that time, ordinary customers preferred artificially

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orange colored sausages to whitish additive-free ones, as they were not aware of the
sas
sorbic acid or sodium nitrite, which is a carcinogen.> In 1986 after improving the ways/
of vacuum-packing and transporting, not to mention preventive measures/ against
germs and epidemics, the first completely additive-free sausages in Japan were sold by
Seikatsu Club in Tokyo.
10 Like Wagoen, Hirata Farm's sales routes/are limited to the shops where it can
decide the prices.) Nitta once had a deal with a huge supermarket, but it did not last
long. That was because the supermarket, to Nitta, obviously seemed arrogant and
kept on cutting down the supply price as is still often seen in the relationship (between
ように
huge corporations and small factories in the provinces) It is an irony (that the
Q3
supermarket later ran a huge deficit while Hirata Farm has become a successful
business model.")
QI
11 Nitta has accomplished another remarkable feat: the establishment of the Eastern
Marine Silk Road, which connects Harbin in China, Khabarovsk in Russia, and Sakata
by way of the Amur River. This had been considered impossible. The first cargo came
to Sakata Port in 1992. Thanks to this route, we will have more and more
opportunities (to do business in Russia and China.)
12 Nitta recalls, "When my father didn't allow me to go on to college, I told myself to
find out what my mission was why I was born and what I was supposed to achieve.
My mission was to work at a piggery, and it was my dream to run the best piggery in
22
Japan. I cannot imagine a life without a dream." The man who had spent hundreds
of nights with his pigs in a pigsty and overcome numerous economic crises surely has
completed his mission.
p.63 脚注
77+=17 Q1 How many items does Wagoen purchase from the member farmers?
Q2 What does “cutting-edge” mean in paragraph 3? Make a guess. Newest
Q3 What does "this" in the second sentence in paragraph 4 refer to?
p.65 脚注
スキャニング Q1 What is the revenue of Hirata Farm?
x+7=7Q2 When did Nitta start working on additive-free sausages?
Q3 What happened to the huge supermarket that Hirata Farm once had a
deal with?