So glad you asked.

The Alishan Organic Center has grown out of our shared vision of a community-minded space where one might enjoy not only organic food, but organic thought!

The whole thing began in a 6-mat room down the street almost twenty years back. At that time, our goals were clear: we wanted organic granola and peanut butter. Turned out quite a few others did too. We set up Alishan for importing certain staple foods and Tengu Natural Foods for mail order distribution. A lot of time and hard work (and a whole lot of granola) got us from that little room to the big red barn complex that is the Alishan Organic Center.
The Center (pictured below during our Fall Farmers Market 2003) is home to a friendly cafe, event and gallery space, and on weekends, Tengu's organic retail shop. (On weekdays, it's where we answer the calls and fill the orders and chat with the import folks and all that jazz.)

Why Here? Here, where the flat Kanto Plains and the Japanese Alps meet? Because it's beautiful where we are, and still only an hour from central Tokyo.

Why Vegetarian? As many reasons as there are vegetarians around. As an organisation, we support vegetarianism as a healthy, tasty lifestyle choice that benefits the individual consumer and society as a whole. The meat industry in big-money economies is violence on a mass scale, not to mention just plain toxic. And that wretchedness inevitably transmits to those who eat the result, in the form of dangerous chemicals and hormones at the very least.

Why Organic? Simply, organic farming as a production system inflicts the least harm on the farmer producing, the consumer buying, and the environment both have to share with the rest of the living.

Long term customers have seen the amount of organic products that we sell increase over the years, usually replacing conventionally grown items in our stores. At Alishan we feel that the reasons to buy organically grown and processed foods mounts year by year. Here are a few:

PROTECTION OF SOIL
Organic farming builds the soil so that it can yield good crops. Conventional farming techniques just add chemicals to the soil so that a crop can be produced. Conventional farming loses tons of topsoil through lack of attention to soil building. Organic farmers work to stop topsoil loss because without topsoil they have nothing.

PROTECTION OF WATER
Organic farming protects the world's water resources while conventional farming pollutes it. The EPA (US) has found 98 agricultural chemicals in the groundwater of 40 states. The EPA identifies agriculture as the number one non point source of water pollution in the USA.

SUPPORT OF SMALL-SCALE FARMERS
Organic farming supports farming communities and the family managed farm. Organic helps the family farm in their fight against big business controlling all food production.

PROTECTION OF BIODIVERSITY
Organic farmers, as smaller independent units, help try to maintain biological diversity through the use of different seeds, different techniques, crop rotation, etc. With the number of foods available actually decreasing as everything becomes homogenized in mass (beefsteak tomato) culture, the value of this kind of cultivation increases exponentially.

PROTECTION OF PEOPLE
Conventional farming field workers are routinely exposed to dangerous chemicals. Organic farming reduces health risks to both producers and consumers.

What does Organic mean in terms of our products?
If we list a food we offer as Organic, we mean that of the ingredients, at least 90(and usually 100)% by weight, have been grown and processed without artificial herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers, fungicides or preservatives. We also mean no post-harvest treatment, and verification by independent certifying groups or overseas government agencies. For foods less than 90% organic, we'll happily tell you which ingredients fit the bill.

If you have questions or would like more information, please contact us.