A young entrepreneur is striving to create a network of consumers and farmers promoting pesticide-free agricultural products.

Kazuma Nishitsuji, 33, was born into a salary worker's family in Fukui Prefecture and had little to do with agriculture as a young boy. But he became interested in farming while in high school when idle rice paddies began to rise in number as the government pared back rice production.

Nishitsuji then joined the agriculture facility at Kyoto University, where he came to learn that one of the biggest problems faced by Japan was its farmers were aging with few young successors.