Up early leaving the port city of Kobe.
After much travelling by bus and plane we arrived at Chitose airport in Hokkaido. What a surprise to see white frozen land covered in snow, and snow still falling.
This northern most island of Japan was absolute wilderness until 100 years ago at which time the government decided to open up the land using mainly retired soldiers or samurai. Clearing the land was hard work and a long time to settle down into production.
The local farmers story left an impression of the remoteness and harshness of the environment equal to Australia's in a lot of aspects.
Lunch in Sapporo - famous for its ice festival, then on to a meeting with big boss Zennoh and the Hokuren Group who produce feed for livestock and are part of the Zennoh Co-operative.
The co-operative does many things for the farmers from government representation to chemical supply to selling food. It has $100 billion turnover and is the world's largest co-operative, investing back into the industry. This structure of everything under one roof, so to speak, seems better.
In Hokkaido alone there is 1.5 million cattle on feed, consuming 9,200 tonne of pellets daily made up of 3% lupins and 30% feed barley. Zennoh, also known as JA, have been genuinely interested and very knowledgeable.
Off to Niseko on the bus in the afternoon. It's snowing really heavily. But we can't ski due to insurance, which is all good.
At the Niseko Northern Resort, we had our last official dinner with our hosts from Zennoh, who thanked us for visiting them in Japan and presented us with bottles of sake to take home. Richard thanked Zennoh on our behalf for being such generous hosts and expressed his gratitude for the strong relationship CBH have had with Zennoh for the past 44 years.
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