Great idea for a thread GaijinFarmer
I'll try and not turn this into a diatribe against JA but that isn't going to be easy.
I can't say for other areas as the rules may be different but here in Chiba you don't need to be in JA to sell your produce and you don't even have to be a registered farmer. If you want to sell through JA shops and the JA system then obviously you do but otherwise you are free to negotiate your own sales routes, I'd actually suggest people are better off not getting involved with JA at all. Here if you want to join JA and sell through their outlets then you buy all your inputs from them and deliver your harvest to them, then they tell you what price they will pay for it ad return anything they deem not fitting in with their standard. JA are way more expensive for fertilisers and other inputs than home centres or buying composted manure direct from animal farms, they don't have an organic range at all and many of the pesticides have been banned in Europe a long time ago.
As a non JA farmer (in Chiba) you can sell through Michi no Eki, supermarkets and department stores, farmers markets and events or direct to restaurants and customers. Some Michi no Eki insist on a JA bank account for payment but others do not. Most of the vegetable farmers we know are not in JA as such, they maintain friendly relations but keep them at arms length. I have heard though that some other areas take a more conservative line and once you start working registered farmland there is a certain amount of pressure applied to come into the JA system along with everything that entails.
Vegetables aside,to sell eggs you need to have your chickens vaccinated against Newcastle Disease (yearly) and have them registered with the local council.
Would be interested to know what the regulations are in other prefectures.
Changes to agricultural system regulations
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