41: Meet Japan’s Most Famous Farmer Supplying Asia’s Top Restaurants | Yuzuru Kajiya

About this episode

Yuzuru Kajiya discusses his journey as a renowned farmer in Japan supplying Michelin-starred restaurants and the cultural influences on his farming practices.

In this episode, we sit down with Yuzuru Kajiya , a famous farmer from Japan who supplies top-tier, three-star Michelin restaurants across Japan and Asia. Yuzuru shares his journey from touring elite French restaurants in his youth to starting his own farm focused on growing unique, exotic, and high-quality produce, a contrast to traditional Japanese farming. We explore Japanese culture and how values like craftsmanship and perfection translate into his farm and the restaurants he works with, and how Japan’s uniquely low land cost is failing to attract new young farmers. Yuzuru also reflects on how his Canadian education in horticulture and exposure to Western culture shaped his mindset, enabling him to succeed by adopting new methods and focusing on the culinary farmer niche. Consider this episode your gateway into Japanese farm and food culture; we’re sure you’ll find it as interesting as we did! Kajiya Farm: https://kajiyafarm.jp/ Timestamps [0:00] Intro [8:00] Yuzuru’s farming education and youth in Canada [10:18] Touring 3-Star Michelin restaurants around the world [13:15] Discovering unique farmers in Europe and Asafumi Yamashita’s influence [24:18] Yuzuru’s strategy to…

People in this episode

Host: JM Fortier

Guest: Yuzuru Kajiya

Topics covered

• Japanese farming
• Michelin restaurants
• culinary culture
• agriculture education
• exotic crops
• farming economy

Keywords

• Yuzuru Kajiya
• Japanese farming
• Michelin restaurants
• exotic produce
• culinary farmer
• farming education
• Kajiya Farm

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Kajiya Farm

Books & works: three-star Michelin restaurants

Places: Japan, Canada

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