Junkan-mai circular rice expands to eight cafeterias after 16 tonne harvest

Junkan-mai, a circular rice cultivated from composted corporate food waste by company Bondish, will expand its year-round supply to eight corporate dining facilities from November following an autumn harvest of approximately 16 tonnes.

The Junkan-mai Project started in 2023. It converts food scraps and coffee grounds collected from participating office cafeterias into liquid fertiliser and compost. The recycled material is transported to farmland in Saitama Prefecture, where rice is cultivated and subsequently returned to corporate cafeterias to establish a closed-loop resource cycle between urban workplaces and rural farms.

The project also addresses structural vulnerabilities and extreme weather affecting Japanese rice production. Data from the Japan Meteorological Agency indicates that Pacific coastal regions of eastern Japan recorded 236 percent of average rainfall and 46 percent of typical sunshine in September 2026, delaying harvesting and harming crop quality. At the same time, an agricultural cooperative survey identified declining rice prices and an ageing farm population with fewer successors as the top operational challenges, each selected by 32.2 percent of respondents.

Increased organic waste recovery raised the 2026 Junkan-mai yield by approximately 30 percent year on year, enabling the project to expand its year-round cafeteria presence from three locations to eight through mid-April 2027. In addition, 22 cafeterias will serve a special two-day menu on 5 and 6 November, pairing the 2026 rice crop with seasonal vegetables supplied by Yatsugatake Agricultural College under a circular farming agreement signed in June.

Project organisers plan to apply the cafeteria-derived compost to vegetable fields at the college in Nagano Prefecture to develop circular vegetable production. The college and catering firm have also conducted nine on-site vegetable markets across Tokyo offices, selling produce harvested the previous day by agricultural students directly to office workers.