Today’s News from the Farm is an interview with Kouki Takahira! He is part of the 2025-2026 Japanese Agricultural Training Program cohort and one of our awesome interns (more detailed information about the Program here)! He arrived at Full Belly Farm last September and will be with us until the beginning of October when he’ll head to UC Davis for a few months of classes before heading back to Japan at the end of the year. He’s a regular part of the Palo Alto Farmers Market Team and is an excellent baker!
He generously sat down with me last week to chat about his background and experience here. Here’s a lightly edited version of our conversation.
Elaine Swiedler, CSA Manager
Where are you from? What was your connection to farming?
I’m from Inami, a small town, in Hyōgo prefecture. It’s near Osaka.
My family is involved in agriculture. My grandmother is a farmer, my mother’s mother. She grows vegetables on one acre – daikon, napa cabbage, turnips, things like that. She grows year-round and sells her vegetables to supermarkets. My family helps. But working on the farm is my parents’ second job. They have other main jobs. My mother works in the hospital and my father works for the government, on roads. I have an older brother. He is in the military and is not interested in farming. I am interested in farming and went to an agricultural high school, which was three years.
What did you do at the farm? And what did you like doing there.
I was always working for other companies but I would help on the weekend. I liked the tomatoes!
What have you done since graduation?
I worked as a restaurant chef at an organic dairy farm. My main job was making pizza, using the cheese from the dairy. I also helped take care of the cows and helped make the cheese.
Then I went to work at a construction company that also has a tomato farm. I just worked on the tomatoes, not construction. The tomatoes were all in greenhouses. They had four greenhouses, three with 6,000 plants, one with 3,000. We grew the tomatoes, picked them and delivered them.
How did you hear about the Training Program?
The owner of the dairy told me about it. His father had done the program. He knew that I wanted to be a farmer and he said that this is the best program for learning farming and learning English.
What is your farming goal?
After this program, I want to go back and do more training for a few years. Then I want to start a new vegetable farm at my house. This will be separate from my grandmother’s farm. She wants to keep farming and isn’t retiring soon.
What do you do at Full Belly Farm? What do you like doing?
Everything. It is a good farm to be at because there is a little bit of a lot of things. And it’s all delicious. Every day is a different project. And I like cooking. My favorite part is picking cherry tomatoes.
What else do you want to do at the farm?
I want to try picking more things, more planting. I want to use the tractors more. My family just has one tractor, and it’s small. I want to try using the big tractors and the combine.
What is something new that you hadn’t tried before? What are some of your favorite crops to eat?
I had not tried a lot of the melons. I think my favorite is the piel de sapo. Other things I like are the navel oranges and mandarin orange. I like potatoes, especially the red ones. And all of the meat is so good, especially the pork.
What’s been something surprising about being here?
Summer was so dry. In Japan, it rains in the summer. It also was so hot.
Also, Japanese farmers don’t spend time weeding by hand. They use weed whackers or chemicals, they don’t hand weed. Hand weeding takes a lot of time.
You’re so good at exploring after working at the Saturday Farmers Market in Palo Alto. What have been some of the highlights?
Yes. Every week after the market we talk about where to go. We’ve visited the stores we sell to in San Francisco like BiRite and Rainbow. We’ve been to Mt Diablo and the Snoopy museum in Santa Rosa. And we’ve been trying burger places. We’ve gone to 20!
What is the best burger so far?
Billy Roy’s Burger in Fremont
*Beet readers – got a burger recommendation somewhere between Palo Alto and Guinda that Kouki should try? Let us know!
