Field notes: two days of training at Suzuki Farm, Japan

We say often on this journal that ICHIGO grows Japanese strawberries to a method. This is what learning that method looks like.

Date: May 12–13 Place: Suzuki Farm, Shizuoka, Japan

For two days, our team joined the daily work of Suzuki Farm, a working strawberry operation in Shizuoka, under the guidance of its representative, Mr. Suzuki. Not a seminar with slides at arm’s length — actual work inside the houses, with the farm’s own crop, at the farm’s own pace.

What the two days covered

The training ran wide on purpose. Working alongside the farm team, we moved through:

• Cultivation technique — how the plants are managed on raised benches, day by day, so that every berry ripens evenly and hangs clean, never touching the ground.
• Farm management — how a Japanese family farm plans its season, its labour and its houses so that quality stays constant from the first pick to the last.
• Quality management and grading — the part Japan is famous for. In the packhouse we sorted real fruit on the grading line, learning how berries are separated by size class (2L, L, M, S) and how a box that carries a farm’s name is checked before it ships.

Why this matters for India

Every practice we saw exists for a reason that ends at the eater’s plate: the bench height, the picking rhythm, the grading classes, the way a single bruised berry never makes it into the box. None of it is decoration. It’s a system — and a system can be learned, adapted and implemented.

That was the real outcome of the two days: a concrete confirmation of what we need to do to implement these techniques and this know-how properly in India — in our nursery, in our polyhouses, and on our own packing table.

Our thanks to Mr. Suzuki and the team at Suzuki Farm for opening their houses to us.

ICHIGO® is the premium strawberry brand of Vegibus India — Japanese cultivars, Japanese method, grown in India. The learning continues, and so will these field notes.