Mr. Miki Watanabe, President of Watami Co. Ltd., is a very enthusiastic and a dashing entrepreneur and chief executive, who is turning excellent passions and dreams into a reality. He authored many books as well. Search at "amazon" for these books. Caring about the education, he is rapidly expanding activities such as education assistance to many children not only in Japan but as well as in Cambodia (recently in Nepal too). It is really admirable.
As the price of crude oil is increasing (at present the price is temporarily stabilized but, eventually to what extent will it rise?), there is already shortage of food worldwide (moreover, there is a sign of condition to be worse due to changing climate, scarcity of water etc.) and so the present condition where millions of people are starving to death (also called as "2C+3F" －Climate Change and Fuel, Food, Feed－) is hardly expected to improve. I would say that agriculture must be promoted as a growing Industry from a long term point of view since agriculture technology of Japan is excellent. Many worldwide brands will emerge from this sector not to mention the obvious improvement of the food self sufficiency ratio. Moreover, since non-edible parts of agricultural products may be widely used as reclyclable energy, research and development in this field is already becoming competitive worldwide.
I speak whenever there is an apportunity, as does Mr. Watanabe. In May this year, for example, I had an opportunity to speak about agricultural policies at a committee meeting of Liberal Democratic Party that was attended by Mr. Koichi Kato as the chairman, Mr. Motegi, Secretary General, and Mr. Yatsu, Member of the House and former Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.
Mr. Watanabe uses Special zones for Agriculture also (it is difficult to use in reality, why is it so?), and as I was hoping to talk with him about this, he kindly set up an opportunity for me. A one page summary of this dialogue is scheduled to be released soon. Some parts of the talk is posted in his blog (in Japanese).
