NURF

Nagoya Urban Regenerative Farm
NURF Project

What is NURF?

This project started in April 2023 to turn vacant land in Nagoya into edible gardens through regenerative agriculture (regenerative farming) that fixes carbon. The goal is to make Nagoya an Edible City in a few years. Anyone can participate. We are also looking forward to receiving donations of vacant land.

Maika Utsugi

NURF Leader

Message

Join us and listen to the rhythm of nature in the urban NURF, just like SURF riding the waves to the rhythm of the ocean?

NURF Technical guidance
Hiromitsu Iio

Delegate of the National Patriotic Farmers’ Association

Message

Come and learn with us from a casual experience of touching the soil to how to make a field.

What is regenerative agriculture?

Agricultural methods that use technology to reduce carbon dioxide in the air by promoting carbon fixation in the soil in order to cope with climate change. No-till farming is a typical example of this technology. It is also attracting attention as an effective use of farmland near cities and as an old and new technology.

History of NURF

So far, the Green Journey Climate Change Team has been working on the theme of decarbonization, visiting the mayor of Nagoya and the governor of Aichi Prefecture to request a zero-carbon city statement, and developing soy meat burgers with a local café. In 2023, after watching a film about regenerative agriculture called “Your Roots,” all members of the team shifted the focus of their activities to carbon fixation. The NURF project was started to create a social mechanism to fix carbon.

The number of members has increased through SNS and the groupnow has 46 members (as of 2023.6). An office worker comes to water the garden during his lunch break; a mother stops by to weed the grass with her child on her way home from nursery school. A mother sends us a photo report saying that she stopped by at the field on her way to Sakae to do some shopping. The urban fields are a part of people’s daily lives, and the time spent in the fields in the midst of their busy lives serves as a time of refreshment for the members.

On activity days, people bring their own bread for a sandwich party and toast with herb water. The vegetables from the fields become everyone’s vegetables, and there is always a pleasant time flowing in the place where people of various generations and occupations gather in the fields. Why Regenerative? The reality of climate change is also behind this event, and it has become a catalyst for participants to become interested in environmental issues.

In addition to the general activity day on the 28th of every month from 12:30 p.m. (schedule will be changed in July and August) at Higashibetsuin NURF, members are free to use the place whenever they want to go.
Our dream is to increase the number of places like this and one day make Nagoya an Edible City.

NURF also has a worm composting system. Participants are free to use them.