Tokyo government cafeterias featuring dishes sourced from 9 welfare suppliers

Sanko Marketing Foods is serving a limited-time menu featuring produce grown through inclusive agriculture partnerships across Japanese government ministry cafeterias. The fair runs from 19 to 30 October across dining facilities operated by the company in three central government bodies: the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, the Ministry of Justice, and the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare.

Sanko Marketing Foods is sourcing ingredients from nine vocational and social welfare organisations nationwide, including corporate special subsidiaries, social welfare corporations, and agricultural rehabilitation centres. In Japan, nofuku renkei is an initiative that links the agricultural sector with welfare organisations to provide employment for people with disabilities while addressing agricultural labour shortages and an ageing rural population.

The model has also expanded to support the rehabilitation of former offenders. At the Ministry of Justice’s Kasumigaseki 1-chome dining hall, a portion of meal sales during the promotion is being donated to a rehabilitation support fund administered in cooperation with the ministry’s Correction Bureau.

Featured dishes at the Ministry of Agriculture’s Afu Shokudo dining hall include a 1,050 yen curry made with pork patties from Social Welfare Corporation Shirahatokai in Kagoshima Prefecture and rice from Mizuho Rice in Akita Prefecture. The cafeteria is also serving a 1,200 yen seasonal gratin baked in a whole butternut squash grown by Teijin Soleil, a special subsidiary within the Teijin Group that cultivates between 50 and 100 crop varieties in Chiba Prefecture. Other menu ingredients include pasta manufactured at Yokohama Prison and shiitake mushrooms from an employment support centre in Hokkaido.

While several of the ministry cafeterias are restricted to government personnel, the Afu Shokudo dining hall in Tokyo is open to the public through visitor registration at the ministry’s main entrance. The promotion runs ahead of Japan’s national Nofuku Day on 29 November, which promotes broader public awareness and regional expansion of inclusive agricultural employment.