Commercial goods containing cotton from farmland damaged by last year’s tsunami were put on sale for the first time in Tokyo on June 23.
Commercial goods containing cotton from farmland damaged by last year’s tsunami were put on sale for the first time in Tokyo on June 23.
The cotton was produced under the Tohoku Cotton Project, an organization established in Miyagi Prefecture in July last year to help rebuild areas devastated by the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011.
Farmers and students of an agricultural school in Miyagi Prefecture put on sale denim jeans, stoles, polo shirts and towels in Tokyo’s Roppongi district on June 23. Their prices ranged from 682 yen to 16,800 yen (about $8.50 to $210).
Takashimaya department stores are selling towels and stoles containing the Tohoku cotton.
The autumn harvest of the cotton project was less than 10 percent of the target due to typhoons and other factors, meaning that the cotton accounted for just 1 to 5 percent of the total in the products.
However, farmers and companies plan to harvest 8,000 kilograms of cotton this year under the project in hopes of creating a new industry in the region. Cotton is considered easy to grow, even in farmlands damaged by the tsunami.
“When we sell our commercial goods that contain the cotton in Tokyo and Sendai, we want to ask many young customers not to forget the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami because the areas damaged by the disaster have yet to recover,” said Asami Hoshi, 30, an employee of Lowrys Farm shop in the S-Pal shopping center in Sendai.
Lowrys Farm plans to produce goods with cotton harvested under the project this year.
The Tohoku Cotton Project currently has about 60 members, including apparel makers, as well as about 20 farmers who grow cotton on 7 hectares in Sendai’s Wakabayashi Ward and 1 hectare in Natori.