About Us
Our mission
Agriculture is quite important in terms of the environment, food supply, and as a local industry.
We support agriculture by protecting and developing “agriculture as a business” with a view to maintain “life and environment that get along with agriculture”.
Many kinds of delicious vegetables and fruits are produced in Saitama, such as Sayama-tea on Sayama hills, tomatoes in Kitamoto-city, naganegi (a long variety of Welsh onion) in Fukaya, taro in Sayama-city, sweet potatoes in Miyoshi-machi, pears in Shiraoka-city, figs in Kawajima-machi and many more.
How many of them do you know? How many of them have you eaten?
Many farmers earnestly work on agriculture and keep on yielding excellent agricultural products such as Sayama-tea on Sayama hills, tomato in Kitamoto-city, naganegi (a long variety of Welsh onion) in Fukaya, taro in Sayama-city, pear in Shiraoka-city, and many more.
Our Philosophy
Saitama prefecture is a prominent agricultural producer in Japan. There are many farmers who work with devotion and yield excellent agricultural products, but it is a surprise that not so many residents of Saitama prefecture and citizens know what kind of agricultural products are made in their local areas.
“NPO Agriculture Support Team in Saitama” thinks it essential for people to know about the excellent agricultural products yielded in their local areas so as to continuously develop agriculture, and to make our food culture richer.
“NPO Agriculture Support Team in Saitama” was established in April 2017 with an aim to vitalize agriculture and improve our quality of life by encouraging interactions(mutual impetus/mutual communication/mutual understanding/interchange) between producers and consumers.
At present, we mainly work on the following three projects.
1．To hold “Tasting the Best Season of Saitama” events
2．To support Export of Saitama Agricultural Products
3．To develop New Commercial Products
Three Ss
We continue to commit ourselves to the development of Saitama agriculture through the following three projects starting with s.
Seasonal events: tour events named “Tasting the Best Season of Saitama”
Support of export: export support for agricultural products
Saitama crops: development of new commercial products of Saitama crops
Besides the above three projects, we started “Sayama-tea/SINGLE ORIGIN TEA Branding Strategy Project” in 2018, and we keep on working on it.
What we do
1. “Tasting the Best Season of Saitama ” events
We hold tour events about five times a year in cooperation with each local government. We visit farms and try what was harvested. We listen to a farmer on how they grow vegetables and after seeing their working place, we have delicious lunch.
We hope this event will allow people appreciate local agricultural products more deeply and love them. In the future this project will lead to inbound events for foreign tourists.
> more information about "Tasting the Best Season of Saitama" events
2. Exporting Saitama Agricultural Products
Most of the Saitama farms are small family-owned businesses, so it is difficult for them to go through the troublesome export procedures. To get rid of the trouble, our NPO contacts overseas buyers and fulfills the export duties. This project introduces excellent Saitama agricultural products to other countries. We have exported Sayama-tea to Italy, France, Singapore, and Mongolia so far. Now we are negotiating with Poland.
> more information about "Exporting Saitama Agricultural Products”.
3. Development of New Commercial Products
We develop new commercial agricultural products that match the food culture, taste and feel for design of the present-day consumers. This project explores new consumers. This is an attempt to make agriculture closer to people. A Sayama-tea product “Chatsumi(picking tea leaves)”, developed by us, sells well at a shop “The Garden Urawa”. We have also designed special tea packages for exports to Italy. We made a brochure written in Italian so that green tea will be better known in Italy.
Organic Sayama-tea, developed for export to Italy, is also available at our online shop for Europe(English).
> more information about "New Commercial Products Based on Saitama Agriculture”
Board Members
Kunie KAJISHIMA (Representative Director)
Mitsuru YAMAMOTO (Deputy Director)
Ryusuke TOKITA(Director)
Satoshi YAMADA(Director)
Minae KAMEZAKI(Auditor)
(As of June 2019)