Making sense of (un)sustainable food: creation of sharable narratives in citizen-participating farming

There has been broad recognition that current food systems need to go through a process of transformation and transition. In the similar way that other areas have transitioned to be more sustainable, the transition process for food systems has some issues related to justice in terms of achieving more sustainable and inclusive food production, distribution and consumption. Acknowledging the importance of these issues, this article aims to understand how knowledge about desired changes is produced and shared among people engaged in activities to transform food production and consumption. To this end, it analyses the short narratives of urban citizens in Japan engaged in participatory farming, adopting the concepts focusing on the contrasts embedded in the short stories, learning from risk studies. The farmer, volunteer staff members and urban citizens collaborate to grow rice using traditional techniques. Their narratives reveal some contrasts in how they used to engage with food, farms and the local environment, and their engagement now. Furthermore, it was observed that these citizens reconfirm the importance of knowledge learned through actual work on the farm and the different roles played by the farmer, volunteers and local participants in creating and passing on knowledge. In such ways, people’s interaction leads to the creation of shared meanings of “appropriateness” in terms of existing and emerging food-related practices. This matter of meaning-making for “appropriateness” is often overlooked in the discussion of the justice in food systems’ transitions.


Introduction
It is widely recognised that current food systems are not sustainable, and are in fact associated with a third of all global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (Crippa et al. 2021). Agriculture alone is responsible for 70% of freshwater use (Ringler et al. 2022), and is the cause of 78% of the eutrophication of lakes, rivers, seas and oceans (Poore and Nemecek 2018). Moreover, ongoing climate change and higher energy prices make the livelihoods of farmers and fishermen more precarious. OECD argues that food systems should tackle three major challenges simultaneously: "providing food security and nutrition for a growing population", "providing incomes to more than 500 million farmers and others in the food chain, and promoting rural development" and "doing so sustainably, by using essentially the same amount of land and less water, while adapting to climate change and contributing to lower GHG emissions" (OECD 2021a, p. 1). The following changes are needed to achieve sustainable food systems: a shift to organic and regenerative agriculture and reform of livestock production and aquaculture concerning animal welfare and environmental impact; a move away from meat-heavy Western diets; and a reduction in food waste (Club of Rome 2022; EAT-Lancet Commission 2019; OECD 2021a, b).
International organisations, governments, businesses and civil society are working to transform food systems, but, as the OECD and Club of Rome point out, policies often lack coherence (Club of Rome 2022; OECD 2021c). Furthermore, existing efforts are dominated by individualistic and consumer-focused solutions premised on market mechanisms such as certification, labelling and consumer

Just and Sustainable Transitions in Net-Zero Asia
Handled by So-Young Lee, Institute for Global Environment Strategies, Japan. Following on from the well-developed arguments about a just transition for energy systems (Bickerstaff et al. 2013;Newell and Mulvaney 2013), the transition process for food systems has also recently become associated with the issue of justice (Cadieux et al. 2015;Coulson and Milbourne 2021;Kaljonen et al. 2021). For example, climate-friendly foods are not affordable for low-income populations (Hirvonen et al. 2020), and food price hikes caused by carbon tax will put additional pressure on low-income households (Gough 2017;Tiffin and Salois 2012). Furthermore, transformation of food production and consumption will affect farmers and other workers in the food sector (Glennie and Alkon 2018;Gottlieb and Joshi 2010), and dietary shifts to meet climate targets are likely to cause socio-cultural tensions (Peltola et al. 2020). Many of the above issues are about distributional justice. However, among the multiple aspects of justice in food systems transformation, some issues could garner more attention, such as recognition justice (Kaljonen et al. 2021) or uneven power relations in the global supply chains (Coulson and Milbourne 2021). Urban farming, the topic of this article, is one of the topics where justice issues arise in relation to the public and civic actions on alternative food consumption and production practices (Kumnig 2017). This article aims to contribute to understanding the recognition issue by examining a case of collaboration between an urban farmer and local citizens, bearing in mind the following questions: How do people and societies decide the best ways to produce and consume food? How do they generate, share or compete over their ideas in terms of appropriate ways to engage in food production and consumption? Whose knowledge is prioritised over others? Responding to these questions will not lead us to the most effective solution to the triple challenge immediately. However, it will help us take a more nuanced look at the justness of existing and emerging transition steps for food systems.

Justice issues in recognition of food systems transition
Research on the transition to just food systems covers issues such as the affordability and accessibility of alternative food (Gough 2017; Hirvonen et al. 2020;Tiffin and Salois 2012), additional cost put onto producers (Gottlieb and Joshi 2010;Puupponen et al. n.d.) and forced changes in habits and values associated with food, causing socio-cultural tensions (Peltola et al. 2020). These issues have been typically examined as distributive justice issues related to uneven distribution of costs, benefits, risks and opportunities.
Further attention has been paid to procedural justice related to the fairness of participation in agenda setting and actions towards transition (Kaljonen et al. 2021;Newell and Mulvaney 2013). These are all vital issues in light of the fact that food transition also needs to challenge the modern trade systems that force many societies to depend on vulnerable supply chains linked to a limited number of food-exporting countries, which sometimes threatens the availability and access to food (Club of Rome 2022).
Research has pointed out some broader issues related to justice. For example, changes in dietary patterns may cause tensions associated with identities (Peltola et al. 2020). We must also pay attention to the trans-local power relations that link environmental sustainability concerns with other justice issues, such as the precarity of labour. Also, ethical and moral questions arise if we consider nonhumans as subjects of justice (Coulson and Milbourne 2021). However, these issues have not yet gained as much attention as distributive and procedural justice. Studies on recognition justice issues in the food system transition process could also be developed further (Ciplet and Harrison 2020;Hayes-Conroy and Hayes-Conroy 2013;Kaljonen et al. 2021) to pay proper attention to the power relations that lead to prioritising one issue (such as decarbonisation or animal welfare) over others. Potentially, some issues that are vital to one particular group of people are not even considered as issues in food systems transition by others (Hayes-Conroy and Hayes-Conroy 2013). Food does not only provide life-sustaining nutrients, but is also related to a way of life, encapsulating national and local culture, social norms, beliefs and gender roles (Peltola et al. 2020). Food systems transition involves a re-evaluation of current lifestyles, values and community practices, and in some cases, can endanger survival conditions (Cadieux et al. 2015;Kaljonen et al. 2021). Therefore, we should not underestimate the questions of "which issues are recognised as matters of justice when transforming food systems" and "how we can create, contest and share knowledge of the needs, opportunities and risks of food transitions".

Attention to 'meaning-making': learning from narrative analysis on risks and sustainability transitions
Building on the above understanding of the necessity to pay attention to recognition justice and the potential impacts of food system transitions on survival conditions, we can learn a great deal from the debate on risk. Since the late twentieth century, sociological and anthropological studies of risk have elaborated risk as a social construct. Recent studies have investigated diverse and dynamic perceptions of exposure to hazardous situations by analysing people's narratives, including short stories and behaviours (Chamberlayne et al. 2002;Tulloch and Lupton 2003). Some of the risks concerned hardships endured during economic transition periods, including experiences of being unemployed, a single parent or a migrant (Chamberlayne et al. 2002). Other experiences involve social adaptation when joining and retiring from the army (Zinn 2010b), career development and personal networking among freelance creators (Apitzsch 2010), living as homeless minority women (Moxley et al. 2012) and living with HIV (Burchardt 2010). The short stories examined in these studies are usually not as consistent as the "big stories", primarily studied in past narrative research. However, short stories capture well how people try to create and share meanings of their experiences, including uneven power relations and precarious living conditions, and navigate their lives in the face of risks. Concerning food system transition, a study in Southeast Asia analysed short stories told by people in a village where organic agriculture had quickly spread despite rapid industrialisation and a declining agriculture sector. Villagers shared differing interpretations about the recent spread of organic agriculture and future prospects based on their different conditions, in terms of adapting to industrialisation, income growth and retreat from agriculture. Organic farming is one of a range of diverse and dynamic survival tactics, but it is not considered a livelihood that can be sustained across generations (Watabe 2019). These studies do not merely claim that people from different backgrounds have different risk perceptions. People dynamically create 'meanings' for their risky situations and form risk-coping strategies, connecting their knowledge and skills to form an interpretation of the alternative risk frameworks that are suggested by the authorities (Andresen 2017;Womack et al. 2017;Zinn 2004). Since risks are dynamically shaped by society, responding to risks is not (simply) a matter of taking optimal measures to minimise risk based on scientific analysis. It is more a matter of recognising the plural and dynamic ways to make meaning of risk and seek collective capabilities among people to prepare for, protect from or accept the diversely interpreted risks.
Research into sustainability transitions also requires consideration of how sustainability and development are dynamically constructed, taking account of politics of knowledge and people's agency as well as social relationships. The focus must be, therefore, on how local knowledge and practices are connected with wider transformative change (Scoones 2016, p. 309). In other words, it is vital to understand how local actors more broadly interpret transition goals and the steps to transformation for energy, food or other systems. This is often associated with their existing worldviews and practices and how much "capacity to aspire (Appadurai 2013)" to achieve locally interpreted sustainability through collaboration and negotiation. In this context, it is interesting that some advocates of a just food transition evaluate public participation and the link between consumption and production (Cadieux et al. 2015;Renting et al. 2012), or alternative food networks and shorter food chains (Alkon and Agyeman 2011;Glennie and Alkon 2018;Renting et al. 2012). People from different backgrounds are likely to bring their own knowledge and skills, thereby creating alternative interpretations of the desired systems of production, distribution and consumption of food that help them to take practical actions. However, even these collaborations can come up against challenges. People with different positions often clash over their perceptions of risks and opportunities. Access to decision-making processes and the costs and benefits of change are not always distributed among participants equitably (Coulson and Milbourne 2021).

Urban agriculture and community gardens as sites for creation and contestation of meanings
The latter part of this article deals with a case of citizens' collaboration at an urban farm. Urban agriculture and urban farmlands are places of dynamic exchange, contestation and co-creation of new ideas about food production and consumption through citizen engagement (Lin et al. 2015). Urban farmland and agriculture can also be places where a few issues of risk and injustice arise, as we will see below briefly.
Urban agriculture has attracted increased academic as well as political attention since the final decade of the twentieth century. At that time, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) reported there were 800 million people engaged in agriculture in cities globally (United Nations Development Programme 1996). Urban agriculture covers a diverse range of activities including professional agriculture, urban hobbies or community initiatives, and activities carried out in existing farm areas, allotments or family gardens. These diverse contexts also affect the different services that urban agriculture can provide (Langemeyer et al. 2018). Urban agriculture is expected to serve as a way of mitigating the risk of urban food shortages. However, existing research revealed that it may not always make much of a contribution to addressing this issue (Badami and Ramankutty 2015;Martellozzo et al. 2014;Zezza and Tasciotti 2010). Instead, it has other potential values, such as the improvement of urban ecosystems and greening (Contesse et al. 2018;Lin et al. 2015;Mohareb et al. 2017), amenities and comfort to local citizens (Egli et al. 2016;George et al. 2015;Scott et al. 2020), and facilitation of social learning and social capital development (Eizenberg 2012;Firth et al. 2011;Mincytė et al. 2020;Sharp and Smith 2003). Cities recently strengthened support for urban allotment gardens and community gardens for the improved branding of cities by providing urban residents with opportunities to experience nature (Kumnig 2017;Özatağan and Karakaya Ayalp 2021;Spataru et al. 2020;Walker 2016).
However, the growth of urban agriculture supported by policies may cause distributive injustice, as sometimes only middle-class or wealthier populations can afford access to allotments and community gardens (Celata and Coletti 2018;Demailly and Darly 2017). When city governments strongly promote urban allotment gardens, this may pose risks related to access to land and food for those who cannot afford to engage in this type of food production. Moreover, people engaging in food production activities in cities often create more diverse meanings than the values defined by national or local authorities. For example, research on urban gardening in Eastern Europe in the communist era revealed that urban families secretly produced food to ensure they had stable access to food even when economic activities were strictly controlled by the authorities (Djokić et al. 2018;Slavuj Borčić et al. 2016). People who have access to allotments in contemporary Western cities attach sharply different meanings to their activity based on their class, generation, gender and other backgrounds (Jansma and Wertheim-Heck 2022; Mincytė et al. 2020). Against such backdrops, some scholars point out the contradictory functions of urban agriculture in the contemporary urban development.
Within the context of neoliberal urban development, urban agriculture and gardens play a contradictory role. While self-organized collective urban agriculture projects often understand themselves as an alternative practice to the dominant food system and to neoliberal urban politics (McClintock 2014), urban vegetable cultivation is also used as an instrument to make districts more attractive, intensifying gentrification (Kumnig 2017, p. 233) To put it differently, urban farmland with citizen participation is noteworthy as a site where meanings for space, food and the environment are generated and shared through the exchange of diverse values and backgrounds among actors, including governments, farmers, consumers and other residents who all have different reasons for engagement, as well as diverse values and powers.

Purpose of the article
This article does not aim to create objective criteria to judge whether the transition process for food systems are being carried out "justly" or to evaluate specific policies or citizen initiatives. Instead, it aims to understand the mechanisms to create meanings for "appropriate" or "inappropriate" ways of interacting with food production and consumption, and looks at how they are shared by examining short stories and behaviours of farmers and urban residents engaged in a rice farming initiative in Japan. Some cities in Japan have introduced policies to protect and promote urban agriculture since the late twentieth century. Although agriculture has shrunk for more than half a century due to changing policy discourse and socioeconomic conditions, there are still examples of unique collaboration between farmers, urban residents and local governments that work to promote the multi-faceted values of agriculture. The study looks at one of these collaborations to understand how they create and share their meanings of "appropriate" patterns of interacting with food, environment and society. The study examines the short narratives and carries out observations of actions by those involved.

Observation and examination of short stories to capture 'meaning-making'
The study investigates the case of rice farm activities by one farmer, several volunteers and other citizens, paying attention to the process of reshaping their ideas about appropriate relationships between people and food, farming and the environment. The author of this study carried out participatory observation of the activities and conducted individual and group interviews. In analysing the interviews and activities, the study paid attention to the process of meaning-making through actions and storytelling, inspired by narrative studies analysing short stories (Bamberg 2012;Ochs and Capps 1996). Such studies were done on the understanding that narrative interpretations of experiences are not "dubious retrospective activity that organizes chaotic reality", but "have a constitutive role in our existence" (Meretoja 2014, p. 105). Unlike traditional studies that gave privilege to coherent long stories, narrative studies pay attention to how people recognise the world and identify themselves through their short stories. Among them, Bamberg revealed that people navigate through the triple dilemmatic spaces of "(i) sameness⇔difference between self and other; (ii) world⇔person direction of fit; and (iii) constancy⇔change across time" (Bamberg 2012, p. 205). Risk studies that analyse narratives introduced in the previous section also focus on how short narratives of hazardous situations or precarious lives are expressed by narratives contrasting past and present, the speaker him/herself and their reference group, and spaces with higher or lower risks (Zinn 2010a, b).
This paper tries to understand how people engaged in a rice-growing activity generate meanings about their activities, their past and present patterns of food consumption, or their attitudes to the environment and society. To this end, it examines their short stories and simple behaviours as observed in their activities. Attention is paid to the unique contrasts between farming and other livelihoods, knowledge obtained in classrooms and knowledge developed through physical experiences on the farm, as well as the collaborative space and ordinary society. All these come to light from their citizens' stories and behaviour.

Context: changing values attached to urban agriculture in Japan
The idea that there were multiple values in urban agriculture and civic participation, particularly for amenities and comfort of urban residents, evolved in Japan towards the end of the twentieth century (Zushi and Sato 2012). During the 1970s to early 1980s, the Government of Japan tried to eliminate policies that were preferential to urban farmland in favour of policies that aimed to provide large areas of land as residential zones to middle-income groups at affordable prices. However, some of these new policies were postponed at the time in the face of strong opposition campaigns led by the agricultural cooperatives (Hashimoto 1995;Ishida 1990). In the late 1980s to early 1990s, Japan entered a bubble economy following the Plaza Accord in 1985. Land prices in urban areas of the three major megacities rose steeply. Additionally, urban farmlands were taken up as one of the topics in the Japan-US Structural Impediments Initiatives (SII), pressuring Japan's government and society to accept fundamental changes in the country's economic systems. While SII aimed to stimulate the demand for US-made consumer goods, the high price of land was considered a key obstacle to boosting consumption. The Research Group on the Economic Structure Adjustment for the International Cooperation (Kokusai kyouchou no tame no Keizai kouzou chousei kenkyuukai) submitted its report to the Prime Minister in 1986 (Kokusai kyouchou no tame no Keizai kouzou chousei kenkyuukai 1986), requesting the removal of tax benefits to farmers in urbanisation-promoting areas (Hashimoto 1995). However, some local governments and researchers, including urban planners, argued that it was important to conserve urban farming activities in a planned way instead of leaving them to fade out. They embarked on early efforts to develop towns/cities with agriculture through participatory decision-making between urban residents and farmers (Matsuki 1988;Greening Policy Bureau, Yokohama City 1998;Ishida 1990).
The bubble economy collapsed, tipping the Japanese economy into a long-lasting period of low growth. Additionally, due to the low birth rate, the total population started decreasing in 2009. In this context, there was much less pressure to develop urban areas. On the other hand, consumers and urban residents became increasingly proactive when it came to experiencing agricultural activities. They purchased vegetables, fruit and rice at farm stands (Oe 2018), participated in civic farms or hands-on farms (Sato 2012;Yagi 2009;Yamagishi 2015;Ukai 2015), supported farmers as volunteers (Ando and Oe 2016) and even organised citizens groups or businesses for farming. Policies on farmlands and agriculture, in general, changed dramatically. The Basic Act on Food, Agriculture and Rural Areas in 1999 specified six multi-functions of farmlands. The Act on Farmlands in 2009 eased regulations on borrowing and lending farmlands, thereby enabling the business sector to gain easier entry into agriculture. The Basic Act on Promoting Urban Agriculture in 2015 stated that the fulfilment of the multi-functions of urban farming was a necessary condition to form a healthy urban environment (Ishihara 2019). Among the many justice issues associated with food system transitions that we touched on in the previous section, spatial distribution and living conditions were the primary topics of the above-summarised debate on Japanese urban agriculture. However, tensions between forces that wanted to promote the conversion of agricultural land and those that wanted to protect it were eased by the collapse of the bubble economy and population decline. In such a context, the "contradictory roles (Kumnig 2017, p. 233)" in Japanese urban agriculture have not yet emerged as an obvious tension. City governments have introduced zoning policies to maintain urban agriculture to make the districts more attractive, while producers, governments and urban residents enhanced their collaboration to maintain agriculture. Not all classes of citizens have access to urban agricultural participation and farmland, but tensions over spatial access are less likely to be apparent as population pressure eases.

The case: My Rice Club
In what follows, this study examined how people running and participating in group activities talk about what they do and learn there. Among many cases of collaboration between farmers and citizens in urban farming in Japan, a group called My Rice Club has been studied in this study due to its uniqueness in engaging the citizens in the whole cycle of rice growing throughout a year and the accessibility that made it easy for the author to participate in and observe their activities.
The club is a kind of hands-on farm launched in 2016 in an area on the fringes of Yokohama City. The farmer, volunteer staff members and 20-30 families work together in a small rice paddy owned by Mr. A, the farmer, and grow rice with minimal dependency on machines and chemicals. Club activities start in April and end in November, and over this period the group practises almost all the steps of rice farming from seeding, raising seedlings, pillowing the field, planting, weeding, harvesting and threshing. Thus, unlike many other hands-on farms that offer only limited opportunities, such as planting and harvesting, participants in the My Rice Club can learn the whole process of growing rice. The group also has some seasonal events such as Paddy Observation Day in August, a harvest festival in October and the burning of new year's decorations in the field in January.

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Club activities are managed by Mr. A and his staff who are farm volunteers and university students. Participants pay an annual fee of JPY 10,000 per family, so that participants can enjoy the experience of rice farming, acquiring knowledge of farming and food, and give their children this valuable experience as well. Mr. A does not receive an income from these fees.
When Mr. A came up with the idea for the My Rice Club, he noticed that none of the existing hands-on farms grew rice, and no other events inviting citizens to experience planting and harvesting let them engage in the entire process of growing rice. He started the group in 2016 in cooperation with some farm volunteers whom he worked with for 10 years, and Ms. B, who held cooking classes promoting the consumption of local food. The club uses a small rice paddy located in a large rice farming area. Mr. A uses machines and sometimes chemicals in other parts of his large fields, but the paddy farmed by the My Rice Club does not use chemical inputs and uses machines only occasionally. In the initial year, the majority of the participants were families with children younger than elementary school age introduced by Ms. B. When she left the group in 2018, Mr. C, an associate professor at a university, joined with three of his students to support the management of the group activities, thus mitigating the workload of Mr. A and his staff.
The author took part in rice farming activities and seasonal events for one year in 2017 to experience and observe them. The questionnaire survey and interviews were conducted two years later in 2019. As the number of participants was less than 30 in all, the questionnaire survey did not produce statistically significant results; instead, the responses to the open-ended questionnaire became the basis for questions in the subsequent individual and group interviews conducted in July and August 2019 with the organiser (farmer), six volunteer staff members and two specific participants. Each interview took 1-2 h with a focus on a variety of topics such as activities, food, agriculture and interviewees' own lives.

Narratives of the farmers, participants and volunteers
The following analysis focuses on how people create meanings of 'appropriate and inappropriate engagement with food' through the activities of the club. Section 4.1 analyses the narratives of people involved in the club. The short narratives of people involved in the club contrast food and rice farming with other work, and the difference between the experience and knowledge gained in the club and knowledge learned in other settings. These contrastive relations correspond to Bamberg's three dilemmatic spaces, namely, (i) sameness⇔difference between self and other; (ii) world⇔person direction of fit; and (iii) constancy⇔change across time. They generate and share the meaning of what they gain from leading and participating in the club while revealing these contrasts.

Farmer's narratives
The founder of the club, Mr. A, is one of the most wellknown farmers in the Yokohama area, having made a name for himself in creating cooperative relationships between farmers and the local community and school education. Whenever he talks about farming, he always emphasises that rice farming is part of the community and cannot continue without the support of society. According to him, rice farming is something that should involve the whole local community. Vegetable farmers can do most of the work they do in the field. However, rice farmers must cooperate with other farmers and the local community. Taking water management as an example, farmers cooperate to maintain the irrigation system and obtain permission from the local water management. Hence, maintaining the rice fields is the job of the whole community. Cooperation with others is essential to maintain rice farming. Due to being part of a community and the essential need for collaboration, a rice farmer has different responsibilities from other professions. Mr. A worked in research before taking up farming. Reflecting on his experiences at that time, he says.

Mr. A:
If you look at workers on a salary, all they need to do is accomplish their own tasks, with no need to think about the next generation. The next generation can then do something new by themselves. But farming is hereditary… it wasn't that I wanted to become a farmer but farming was what my grandfather and father did.
According to him, rice farming has two features that are different from the other occupations: firstly, it is not something one can do alone; rather, it requires collaboration with neighbours to maintain the local environment; and secondly, it is not something one can decide to stop or resume on one's discretion, since it is extremely difficult to resume once it is stopped. Thus, Mr. A attaches a meaning to rice farming beyond individual choice. Rice farming is supported by and contributes to the local society and environment.
The characteristics of rice farming, such as 'social engagement' and 'inter-generational transmission', which are not present in salaried jobs, lead to another contrast he highlights. As the number of people living in non-agricultural livelihoods has increased and society's engagement with agriculture has decreased, both the quality and quantity of knowledge related to food production have changed. For nearly 20 years, Mr. A and neighbouring farmers collaborated with the local schools. They launched an environmental learning programme that invited school children to the paddies. Through this experience, Mr. A realised that parents of the school children were unfamiliar with farming, rice paddies and rice cultivation. Mr. A: I want people to think about why there are still paddy fields here. I want them to think about flood control. Nowadays, people talk more about biodiversity, which is also important, but water management isn't really mentioned. In this area, we have two rivers. So we need to protect the area and work together to manage any flooding-if we do that, the land can be passed down to the next generation.
Mr. A repeats that he wants people to think carefully about the meaning of conserving farming in the area-for example, why the area still maintains water management, and why this area cultivates rice in the rice paddies. There is a direct meaning incorporating the practical benefits to the area, including the benefits gained from water management systems. Citizens' engagement in rice farming will be an opportunity for them to consider what farming really means. Using herbicides to weed, which is a fundamental activity in any agriculture, makes the job easier. However, Mr. A wants people to experience how hard a job it is to weed rice fields by hand. He hopes that by doing so, they will understand a little more about the work of growing food and will care about food, farmland, water, etc.
Mr. A does not expect group participants to become professional rice farmers. He thinks "if things go well", someone may consider becoming a farmer, but it is not necessary. There are many ways to engage with and support local farmers. Consumers could buy more locally-produced food, grown in neighbourhoods where they often walk. Feedback from locals is a great encouragement to the farmers. For decades, Mr. A has tried to encourage collaboration with volunteer firefighters and local parents and teachers associations. He was certain that farms could provide opportunities for people to work together. The third point in his narrative is about the difference between doing something alone and with doing something with supporters. "Thinking about this by myself is not going to change anything. But I was fortunate", Mr. A says, because several farm volunteers and others, including a Yokohama City-certified 'vegetable sommelier', a university associate professor and his students gather at his farm to help with the farm work and lend a hand with ideas for club activities.
In summary, Mr. A's narrative incorporates three points: i. contrast between other occupations that can stand alone and rice farming that is embedded in the local socio-ecological systems; ii. contrast between the past and present knowledge of and engagement with farms among the neighbours; and iii. contrast between acting alone and together with people despite knowledge gaps.
The contrasting ideas used by Mr. A in his narrative above allow the speaker and the listener to share a common idea, namely that although agriculture has gradually been treated as an unnecessary activity in cities, it is still part of society and should be maintained by rebuilding its relationship with the local community.

Participant
Eleven families attended the Paddy Observation Day in August 2019 and were asked to respond to a short questionnaire survey asking about their motivation and impressions. Their responses highlighted a few shared points. The first point is about their motivation: many participants joined the club because they wanted to experience farm activities on a seasonal cycle instead of just attending one-off events. Some joined for the benefit of their children. The second point is about learning: they understood how hard it is to work in the fields and grow rice. Some appreciated the way their children grew stronger both physically and mentally through their engagement in the farm activities and interacting with club members. Others also indicated an intention to start growing vegetables in their garden and that they would support local farmers by buying locally grown rice and vegetables. To gain a more nuanced sense of the responses, below is a narrative by a participant who is the only person to have been a member of the club since it was first established.
Ms. G grew up in the area, but was unaware that there were still farmlands until she had children. Although she did not expect her family to gain farming skills, she still appreciated the opportunity to visit the farms.
Ms. G: We (Ms. G and her close friend who is also a club member) found out that we both like these types of activities by chance. There's no such opportunity around here and when I asked some other friends about the club, they all said it was a fun activity. I mean, a rice paddy is such a great place to sit and play with the baby.
As seen in this statement, participants often emphasise that the club is definitely different from other places of experience that they can take their children to. Put another way, in a city like Yokohama, there is no place for children to experience and enjoy food and farmland. Ms. G has been involved in the club since the first year. However, it is not easy for a family with a baby to guarantee that they can participate in the farming experience every Sunday morning, and there were times when Ms. G was unable to attend or just sat and watched, due to her second pregnancy and family commitments. Nevertheless, the support of her family made it possible for her to participate for four consecutive years.
The participants experienced farm work and came to understand how hard work it is, as Mr. A had hoped. That is why Ms. G is concerned about her insufficient contribution to farm work.
Ms. G: I know that it's quite hard work (on the farm) so I felt bad that I couldn't participate. This year we've got a lot of members so the activities go smoothly. We pay the fees to participate but I do feel sorry that I couldn't participate.
In summary, the participants' response to the questionnaire survey emphasise the two points: i. they appreciate the knowledge gained and deepened thoughts about food and agriculture; and ii. they recognise that children can change by working at the farm or the experience they can gain at the farm.
The above two points highlight the difference between the club and other occasions, and the changes club members experienced through joining the activities. It is clear that it is shared message when Mr. A states that rice farming is part of society and that rice farmers can gain experience and knowledge that they cannot get elsewhere. In addition, there is a third point unique to the participants: iii. they share some sense of responsibility in contributing to the club activities as they understand how difficult it is to do rice farming.
This phrase about members sharing responsibility for collaboration suggests that the participants really do feel that they are also creating a meaning about how they should engage in food and agriculture.

Volunteer staff members
Four farm volunteers and three students from Mr. C's laboratory supported the day-to-day management and activities of My Rice Club, such as communication, managing the participants' record of attendance and planning and implementing events. They also covered farm work which does not require many people but should be done frequently, such as weeding, spreading fertilisers, etc., aside from the collaboration with participants held every two weeks. They are in a position to invest many times more time and effort than the participants in the club's activities. Is this difference reflected in the meanings and expressions about food, agriculture and the club's activities? Their words highlight some differences between the club's activities (or farm activities in general) and other activities. Firstly, they differentiate the knowledge which people obtain at school and the experiences they have through the club activities or at farms.
Mr. D: We have this rice stem, which looks like this, and this is what turns into rice. Right? But most people just have no idea. So, if we get to experience the whole process of growing rice from the springtime to the harvest in autumn, we change our whole way of thinking when we eat rice. It becomes something we experience, not just something we learn from a textbook at school. There needs to be a balance between knowledge, sense and experience. It's not enough just to learn something from a book. And experience alone is also not enough.
Another point was about the difference between participants' experience before working on the farm or joining in club activities. All the farm volunteers worked for large companies until they retired. Naturally, they did not know each other before they became farm volunteers. It was only by volunteering at Mr. A's farm and joining the My Rice Club that they could find themselves working with participants of all different ages. They say that they are impressed to see the forming of a new community when, for example, they find that children and adults across families and ages chat with each other while collaborating or observing something. The importance of exchanges among people with different backgrounds is strongly emphasised in the farm volunteer members' narratives.
Mr. I (Volunteer): So, we all come from different backgrounds, don't we? And we've got to know everyone (with their differences) and make them our own. It's really great. Mr. A: It's like a sort of cross-cultural communication. Mr. I: Cross-cultural communication. Exactly. Mr. D: Our society, in general, is organised by age groups. But here we have kids and their grandmothers at the same time. So, people join the club and get along with everyone, young and old. And we as staff members, including Ms. G, interact with everyone too. You hardly ever see that in society, it's really rare.
There were two characteristics of farm work and club activities highlighted here-opportunities to experience the entire process and communication and collaboration with people of different backgrounds and ages. This experience enabled participants to develop their thoughts. Mr. D continued as follows: Mr. D: Our food culture is a convenience-store culture, isn't it? Or fast foods like Yoshinoya (a chain restaurant famous for beef-on-rice dish). Cheaper is 1 3 better. Even if we avoid imported foods in the supermarket, we consume them if we eat at Yoshinoya. We don't think it's a problem really -I guess we are concerned about whether the food is safe to eat, but we think it can't be helped from an economic point of view. That's our everyday culture. On the other hand, when club members come here and experience how food is grown, they may taste rice differently. Mr. A's farm also produces vegetables. So participants can get a better idea of how vegetables really taste. It would be great if parents and their children can all realise this.
The staff have expectations that participants will change their way of thinking, having engaged in activities as farm volunteers. They also state they have changed their way of thinking through engaging with farming. One of the volunteer members confessed that he hated vegetables in the past. However, when he started volunteering at Mr. A's farm, he had a chance to take some back home. Then he started looking up how to use the vegetable on the Internet and realised how good vegetables were. He also realised that he had not fully appreciated and given feedback on the food his wife cooked for him, and now he always gives feedback. They told these amusing stories about how they had changed since participating at the farm and they made a point that they are not that different from the other participants. They said they could share a sense of amazement and joy with the other participants through the club activities.
Mr. D: First of all, I want people to realise how tasty food is. Usually we just want to eat so our stomachs are full, that's our food culture. But I think that by experiencing how food is grown, we feel more satisfied. It is important to have places where we get to have those experiences. There are many older men and women who haven't had that experience. Even at our age, we are learning so much through our work with Mr. A. We are just one step ahead of the participants. In this sense, I really do believe that if we can show them that it's fun and enjoyable, we can all make our lives richer.
They share a sense that we have come far away from the desired status we had in the past. Staff members contextualise what they retrieved through engaging with farming and want to give participants the opportunities to have similar pleasure and joy and develop their thoughts like they themselves did. Thus, they carefully plan activities so that people from children to seniors can enjoy them within an easy, 2-h time frame. They look for opportunities to transfer their knowledge and skills, and observe their responses. Aiming for communication space, they hope that participants bring their families along too. In other words, the volunteer staff members' points were: i. contrast between the desktop knowledge and knowledge grown through physical experiences; ii. contrast between their past work in homogeneous groups and the farm activities with people of all different backgrounds; iii. changes in their thoughts about food grown through their engagement; and iv. their roles as forerunners in between the participants who want to learn and the farmer (Mr. A) who wants to share the experiences.
The first point is the difference between themselves (club) and other places of the society, and the second and third points illustrate the changes that occurred in their thoughts and knowledge. The fourth point clarifies the role of the volunteer members to bridge the experience and knowledge between the farmer and participants. By taking on the role and responsibility of learning about the contents of the messages Mr A wants to convey 'one step earlier' and then passing them on to other participants with enjoyment, they reinforce the meaning of their previous inappropriate relationship with food production and consumption, and they can express their gratitude to the farm and to Mr. A for giving them the opportunity to create alternative relationships.

Interactions toward co-creating partially shareable meanings
As we have seen, there are substantial overlaps in the meaning of the activities described by the participants. They highlighted similar characteristics found in club activities and in farming in general, i.e. the opportunity to have different experiences and engage with various people, and they also stated similar points about how they changed their thoughts about food, farming and the environment. How did they come to develop and share these overlapping views? To answer this question, the observation of two activities is to be discussed.

Observation of paddy fields and natural lives
The club's rice farm activities start with preparation of the fields and seedbeds in April, followed by levelling the land and planting of seedlings in May and then weeding in June and July. August is a relatively quiet month. The farmer and the volunteer members control the water level and input additional fertilisers, but they do not need to meet every weekend. Taking this opportunity, the club holds Paddyobservation day where they find and observe insects and aquatic life in the field.
One Saturday morning in early August 2019, more than 20 families gathered in front of the workshop on Mr. A's field. A group of college students from Mr. H's laboratory 1 3 facilitated the day's activities. They provided a bingo card with nine blanks. Then, one of the volunteers-a secondary school biology teacher-introduced what kinds of wildlife can be observed in the fields in Yokohama during this season, such as dragonflies, frogs and crayfish. The participants wrote nine species of wildlife on their bingo cards. Then, they headed for the paddy fields hoping to find some wildlife. Whenever they found something in or around the paddy, they took it to the biology teacher to learn what they had found and cross off one of the spaces on their bingo cards. The winners got a prize of freshly harvested vegetables.
Mr. A and the staff members watched over the participants carefully and took every opportunity to provide them with knowledge about rice, water, soil, grasses, insects and so on. For instance, when participants came back from the paddy field to the work shop to take a break, Mr. A showed them several rice plants that he had just picked out of the club's paddy field. He cut the stem with a knife and showed the participants the small grains of rice growing inside. He told that from the grains in the stem, farmers can estimate the amount and timing of the rice yield. In addition to such knowledge directly linked to farming, the farmer and staff members provided participants with a lot of knowledge that was not directly related to agriculture but that could only be learned by visiting the paddy fields. Participants in turn were also very keen to gain knowledge and were openly surprised and glad when they learned something new. This repeated communication made up of knowledge and feedback, ensured that participants could make the best of the activities to gain new knowledge and properly respond to Mr. A and the staff members.

Observation at the harvest festival
Rice is harvested in late September or early October, and then the harvest festival is held in late October or early November. On the morning of the festival in 2019, Mr. A and the volunteer staff members prepared rice and miso soup, and the event started at 1 pm with a toast by Mr. A to welcome all the participants and staff members, who enjoyed the rice, soup and other foods such as curry, fried sweet potato, steamed vegetables, grilled meat, pickles and salads. All of these foods were brought by the participants.
The festival is an opportunity for My Rice Club members to give their impressions of the club activities. Many were impressed by the way their children enjoyed and grew through the activities. Even the participants without children echoed the point. Another popular topic of reflection was the difficulty of growing rice. Several of the participants mentioned that that they did not know how hard it is to weed paddy fields.
There was then a slide show of photos taken during the year, showing how participants worked hard to flatten the land and carry out planting and weeding activities. Participants recalled how they all worked together on activities that they had never done before and how their children came to enjoy the farm work. Volunteer staff members also made presentations. A participant from the local agriculture cooperative gave a short lecture on the culture of rice growing and its contribution to ecosystems. Another organiser emphasised that rice farmers need social support, which was something Mr. A often mentioned. It was also stressed that people should share the experience to be able to fully appreciate their food. The participant stated that "having worked on the entire rice growing process from seeding and harvesting, I have found that this rice tastes the best compared to rice grown elsewhere. My taste in rice has been altered by the gratitude I feel. I guess it is how we grow our body through having the same air, same water and same food".
As these observations illustrate, all interactions help to reassure participants that their knowledge and experience in the paddy fields are valuable, while they had a less-thanoptimal relationship with food and farming in the past, namely, consuming food with no knowledge of where and how it was grown, or how food production is connected to the local environment and society. At the same time, through these activities, they share an understanding of the different levels of knowledge and roles that are taken on by the farmer, the volunteers and the participants.

Discussion and conclusion
As we saw in the earlier part of this article, there has been increasing interest in the justice debate about food transitions recently, with a focus on issues such as accessibility, ecological and climate change impacts on food consumption, access to climate-friendly food and the impact of shifts in food producers, as well as cultural friction related to a shift in diets. "Justice" of distribution and participation associated with these topics are very important, but do not cover the full range of issues linked with the shift in food systems or daily food practices. Studies revealed that learners were encouraged to re-evaluate their relationship with food, considering environmental, economic and socio-cultural contexts (Hayes-Conroy and Hayes-Conroy 2013; Peltola et al. 2020). Although there is still much to learn from previous studies, it is worth asking 'How do people make sense of the current state of food production and consumption as appropriate or inappropriate?' and 'Whose knowledge matters in the formation of meanings?' Thus, we should pay attention to questions such as "how to generate and share knowledge about appropriate ways to engage with food production and consumption". The narratives of the participants and operators of the My Rice Club, for example, highlighted the contrasts between farming and other livelihoods, knowledge obtained 1 3 in classrooms and developed through physical experiences at farms, and the collaborative space and the ordinary society.
i. Knowledge: The farmer (Mr. A) said he was concerned that adults in the local community did not know much about farming and the environment. Conversely, the participants appreciated the knowledge they gained at the farm, and the volunteer members stressed the importance of gaining knowledge through physical experiences, also reiterating Mr. A's idea that people should know how food is produced and apprehend that rice farming is only possible with the local society's support. ii. Opportunities of interactions: The farmer emphasised that farm activities need social support and can contribute to the local society and environment. The volunteer staff also highlighted the contrast between their past jobs with homogeneous colleagues and their current engagement with people with different skills. iii. Growing capacities of the participants-children in particular: Many participants expressed their sense of wonder to see how children grew stronger while working and playing on the farm with others, and talking to the farmer and the volunteers. The volunteer members also stated that they had changed significantly since joining the activities. The farmer said that he expected this is what would happen. iv. Roles of actors based on the different levels of knowledge: The farmer set up opportunities and invited people to take part so they could gain more knowledge about food, farming and the environment. The volunteer staff members recognised themselves as forerunners who could help participants enjoy and learn. The participants also appreciate their roles as teachers and organisers.
They share such contrasts of knowledge, capacities and opportunities available only through their collaboration at the farm as well as through the different roles among participants reflecting their different levels of knowledge. Building on such contrasts, they share meaning from narratives, indicating that the way urban citizens usually engage with food consumption and production is less than optimal. As we have seen in the previous section about the observation day and the harvest festival, the transfer of knowledge always elicits a reaction of wonder, joy and appreciation among the participants, which in turn reiterates the values of the transferred knowledge and reproduces the different roles that each participant should play in the farming activities. Participants not only gain knowledge from the farmer and volunteers, but they also play an essential role in bolstering the value of farming, the value of opportunities to engage with different people in food production activities and the value shared by farmers and volunteers who can provide such opportunities. Also important are the demarcated roles played by the farmer, volunteer and citizens. Thus, knowledge of 'what is appropriate' is created and shared simultaneously with the knowledge of 'who has the appropriate knowledge and practices'. That said, farmers and volunteers do not share all of their diverse knowledge and opinions with participants. Most notably, while Mr A often shares his thoughts on the policies of the Japanese Government and the City of Yokohama and their former conflicting relationship with urban residents in personal interviews, these topics rarely appear in club conversations. As a result, tensions and 'contradictory roles' are masked from the meaning of 'appropriate' ways of dealing with food that farmers and volunteers shared with the participants.
The next question is to what extent this understanding resonates with mainstream discourse related to the multifaceted values of urban agriculture. To some extent, the meaning attached to club activities by the participants resembles the multi-faceted values of urban and citizensupported agriculture that local governments have been promoting for decades. However, there are a few notable differences. First, participants understand that they formed their ideas and skills through physical experiences at the farm. Secondly, they do not engage in collaboration to contribute to the growth of urban agriculture, and finally they do not foresee such actions will spread widely in Yokohama. Thus, despite similar values to civic participation in urban farming activities, they do not have a direct relationship with one another. Furthermore, because participants understand that their values emerged through their own experience, they feel pleasure and satisfaction from the collaborative activities. In this way, participants make sense of sustainable food through their own stories. provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http:// creat iveco mmons. org/ licen ses/ by/4. 0/.