Resilience of local food systems to the Fukushima nuclear disaster: A case study of the Fukushima Soybean Project

The triple disaster of the Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami and the subsequent accident at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant brought unexpected and unprecedented challenges to households, local communities, agriculture, and industries in the afflicted regions. This chapter concerns the recovery of food production in Fukushima. In particular, I focus on the recovery of food systems, interconnected processes of food production, processing, distribution, and consumption (Niiyama 2001; Takahashi and Saito 2002; Tansey and Worsley 1995), rather than simply examining the recovery of agriculture per se. 1 In this view, the historic disaster can be seen as a major disturbance to the workings of food systems.