Ohba Farm

Ohba Farm was founded by Tomiyoshi Ohba as a dairy cattle farm in 1970. In 1993 his son, Kazuya, joined the family business, foreseeing the importance of switching to farming cattle for meat production. Ohba Farm began its operation as a finishing farm for kuroge wagyu, Japanese black cattle. And today part of its operation follows the integrated farming system, Ikkan Keiei methods. Ohba Farm has been capturing many awards at the Nikugyu Edaniku Kyoshinkai (Meat Carcass Evaluation Competitions) which are competitions organized by prefectural, regional and national governments throughout the year. In one-month Ohba farm submitted 30 cattle to such competitions. “Until we slaughter the cattle and see the actual quality of the meat, I have little idea about the value of it. I sometimes feel like a gambler when the meat of the cattle that I have raised with all my dedication and love is being inspected by judges at competitions. My adrenalin goes up. Winning at the competitions fills me with the joy for being in this trade and strengthens my devotion to raising my cattle better and better every day to produce only the highest quality of beef. Failure to win leads me to think what went wrong and why I failed. But this always leads me to improvements and a better place than where I was”, Kazuya says. Kazuya recently began building a new barn to house additional cattle. Ohba Farm aims to become a 100% integrated farm system, Ikkan Keiei, operation within the next five years. Ohba Farm fertilizes its pastureland with their own cattle compost and raises Italian ryegrass for animal feed using it to produce fermented whole-crop silage (WCS) for animal feed. “Try my beef. What you taste is the sincere care we have given to these cattle every minute for 30 months”, says Kazuya. The farm now has 47 cows and the remaining 120 cattle are comprised of bulls, heifers, bullocks and calves.