Organic Farmers Mr & Mrs Ogawara

Tatsuko Ogawara and her husband Shin. have been organic farmers for 26 years in Funehiki, tilling, planting and harvesting crops from the same soil their family has worked for six generations. On 15 March, four days after the earthquake and tsunami, the alarm on the family's radiation detector – which they bought due to radiation worries during the Chernobyl disaster - went off and kept beeping as radiation levels rose. For the family, it was a terrifying moment.

The family evacuated to Koriyama for five days. However, worried about their small farm, her husband and his mother decided to return. “We have cattle and chickens and we had to come back to feed them. We couldn't leave them and go elsewhere.”

“Until now I was anti nuclear energy, but I didn’t do much about it. And now that such a terrible accident has happened I’ve started to feel that if I don’t do something now then when wilI I do it? If we don’t do anything, who will? Every day I wonder what I should do. I’ve decided to try doing even tiny things, everything that I can offer.”