"All for Children of Children of Children" (Yamada Bee Farm)

JFS Newsletter No.24 (August 2004)
"TOWARD A SUSTAINABLE JAPAN - CORPORATIONS AT WORK" ARTICLE SERIES Article No. 18
http://www.3838.com/index.html (Japanese)
http://www.3838.com/english/index.html (English)

Yamada Bee Farm, Inc. is located in Kagamino, a small town in the mountainous area of Okayama Prefecture, Japan. It's an unusual company that says one of its missions is to protect the beautiful nature by learning the wonders of the nature's system through honeybees and conveying the importance of nature to a lot of people.

In 1948, the company began keeping honeybees, and in 1965, it succeeded in volume production of royal jelly, a type of bee secretion, using its original technologies. Today, it offers a mail order and delivery service, which enables customers to directly receive its products: royal jelly, honey, propolis (a resinous substance collected by bees), and their processed products. The company has 450 employees, and its sales were 23.9 billion yen (about U.S.$219 million) in 2003.

Yamada Bee Farm maintains a traditional honey processing method, in the hope of conveying the richness of nature to customers as well as helping them keep good health. In Japan, much of the honey on the market has been made from honey that has low sugar content, which processing companies buy at low prices, and then concentrating in a vat at low pressure. This process impairs honey's taste and flavor, as well as its nutrients.

Meanwhile, Yamada Bee Farm's honey products consist only of matured honey made by bees in hives over a long time. While pollen contained in honey is usually eliminated to prevent crystallization, the company's honey products include pollen to retain the goodness of nature. Nowadays such honey is a highly prized commodity.

Traditionally, the beekeeping industry was run utilizing the ecosystem in natural surroundings. Bees collect nectar from flowers, the flowers are pollinated by bees and then bear fruit, and the fruit sustain many small creatures. This system helps the plants to spread. Beekeepers worked with nature, without affecting the ecosystem negatively. The bee industry would be sustainable for thousands of years as long as the natural environment doesn't change.

Without a rich natural environment, honeybees cannot survive. In Japan, over the past several decades, many deciduous trees have been cut down, and fast-growing coniferous trees have been planted instead. In coniferous forests, flowers don't produce nectar, and ground vegetation does not grow well, creating an unfriendly environment for honeybees. Furthermore, large scale spraying of agricultural chemicals has destructive effects on them. Also, bees cannot live alone since they are social insects. Each honeybee works as a member of the hive community and helps others. This is the way they live.

Yamada Bee Farm thinks that its mission as a beekeeping company is not only to provide honey products to customers. It also makes continuous efforts to tell many people about the important things that honeybees teach us and the importance of passing things on to the next generation: a healthy environment, coexistence with nature, and the web of life.

What prompted the company to think in this way is the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake that hit Kobe and other parts of Hyogo Prefecture in 1995. When Mr. Hideo Yamada, the president of Yamada Bee Farm, saw many volunteers rush to the disaster areas from all over the country to help reconstruction, he was touched. "Companies should do something to help society," he thought. Starting with the support for the community, the company has expanded its activities to provide environmental education and overseas aid. These activities are generally referred to as a "corporate social contribution," but this company is notable for regarding them as part of its main businesses, not as the social contribution.
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Since 1999, Yamada Bee Farm has been continuing four activities to teach children the importance of nature and to nurture their minds through lessons from the honeybees. They offer a Honeybee Library, a Fairy Tales and Picture Books about Bees Contest, an Eco School, and Honeybee Classes. For the Honeybee Library, the company selected about 10 books and donates them to elementary schools nationwide every year. It selects books that can develop children's thinking ability on nature and the environment, make children understand that all beings are living in connection with each other, and show the common points between the cultures of Japan and other countries to nurture peaceful and happy minds.

Yamada Bee Farm invites requests for the books to be sent to schools. When someone ask for books to be sent, for example, to their former school, the company sends the books to that school along with the applicant's letter. The applicants are happy to reconnect with their school, and the schools are happy to get the books. The company has donated a total of 62,952 books to 5,495 schools since 1999. In 2004 it plans to send packages of 11 gift books to 888 schools. This year's books include "Ima-no Chikyu, Bokura-no Mirai, Zutto Sumitai Hoshi dakara" (Today's Earth, Our Future, We Want to Live on This Planet) written by Junko Edahiro, a chief executive of JFS, and a Japanese version of "Henry Hikes to Fitchburg" written by DB Johnson.

In the Fairy Tales and Picture Books about Bees Contest, adults can have the opportunity to pour their hearts into writing stories for children. By 2003, a total of 20,295 stories in which honeybees or honey appear had been submitted from both inside and outside the country. Excellent works are posted on the company's website, and some of them have been published in Japan.
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http://www.3838.com/english/douwa/index.html (English)

In the Eco School, the company invites children and their parents to its bee farm in Kagamino to provide them an opportunity to come into contact with honeybees. Every year about 300 people participate in this school and enjoy hands-on activities such as observing a beehive, collecting honey, and making candles from beeswax. At first, children timidly look at the hive, but, as they learn more about bees' lifestyle, habits and blessing, they come to feel bees familiar, and their eyes begin sparkling with interest. Thus children learn about the importance of life and the natural environment.

The Honeybee Class is the company's "class visit" program. One of its employees visits elementary schools several times a year to teach children the ecology of honeybees using a beehive and other things display items.One of the employees supporting these activities says "I'm always thinking about how to impress each and every participant." Though the employees have been engaged in the activities for several years, each event is a first experience for each participant, so the presenters do their best to make this once-in-a-lifetime encounter a special thing.

To create a sustainable society, Yamada Bee Farm thinks it is important to value the relationships between humans and nature, between people, and between generations, as well as to try to strike a chord with people. In its community activity report, the company writes: "This is for 'The Children of Children of Children.' This is an underlying concept of our community activities. The term "children" does not mean just human offspring. Besides humans, a variety of vulnerable creatures and plants exist on the earth. We have always believed that our activities relate directly to the future of the earth on which all creatures live."
(From a booklet entitled "Yamada Bee Farm's Community Activities")

Through its continuous community activities, the company also began to consider how to expand the circle of relations to local residents and employees who had not been directly involved so far. It has since then made various efforts, including inviting public participation in a tree-planting tour abroad that until then had only been for employees, and planning new projects in which resourceful residents can participate. A single company's effort is not enough to conserve the beauty of nature. But Yamada Bee Farm hopes that its activities will encourage more and more people to get involved in nature conservation.