Institute For The Future

Film Debut—Changing Season: On the Masumoto Family Farm

The story of the future of farming is being written on the Masumoto Family Farm. Tonight, a new film, Changing Season: On the Masumoto Family Farm, debuts on Valley PBS to tell that story. It chronicles a transitional year-in-the-life of famed farmer, author, and activist David “Mas” Masumoto, and the relationship with his daughter Nikiko, who returns to the family farm with the intention of stepping into her father’s work boots.

During this time of transition, we are honored to have Nikiko as a member of IFTF’s current cohort of Future for Good Fellows. The fellowship is designed to help social inventors like Nikiko “futurize” their work—building their futures thinking skills and engaging with the global foresight community.

When Nikiko decided to come back to the farm it “suddenly changed the timeline of our farm,” Mas said. “Instead of thinking, ‘how many harvests do I have?’ it’s, ‘how many harvests do we have?’”

Extending the farm’s time horizon becomes an exercise in foresight. How can the Masumoto's anticipate the delicious opportunities and daunting threats the next decade will bring? By integrating IFTF’s tools and methodologies for imagining a wide range of possible futures, we hope to help Nikiko and her father better prepare for the future of their farm.

“There is a sense that being an organic small family farm means clinging to survival,” Nikiko said. “While there is tremendous power and necessity to this focus, there is also a need to carve space for dreams and preparation for the future. I have learned that multi-generational work means a circular understanding of time: we must harvest the wisdom from generations before, honor the pasts of struggle, survival, and triumph, tend to the current climate and work, and simultaneously turn to the future. I feel so lucky to be learning and expanding methods of engaging with futures; the future for good fellowship maps beautifully onto the questions that accompany me in the fields about my own life as a young farmer and how I fit into a larger food futures narrative that I hope is written by courage.”

The film was produced by the Center for Asian American Media. For the full schedule of broadcasts nationwide, please visit the Masumoto Family Farm website.