For those of us living in cities, the idea of moving away to a country home surrounded by vast meadows of these pretty white autumn flowers sounds nice doesn’t it? However, this year, in Fukui Prefecture, where crops of thousands of these soba (buckwheat) flowers are grown, residents are perplexed that all these little blossoms literally smell like an ocean of sh*t.

Fukui is a major producer of soba which, is a cornerstone of Japanese cuisine often eaten in noodle form. Around 4,000 hectares of the crops is grown yearly with about half of it getting served up in the Kanto region.  Over there Fukui soba is known for its pleasant aroma.

The soba plant’s flower, however, has provided people living nearby with a different kind of fragrance.

“Since about the end of last month, the area around my home smells like chicken crap. It’s like they sowed the field with manure… or maybe they tapped into a septic tank…”

“There wasn’t anything before, but this year, especially on a sunny day the smell makes me nauseous. My wife can’t even open the window.”

Experts have explained that the reason for this odor has to do with the soba plant’s unique pollination method.  Many popular food crops are able to pollinate themselves. For example, wheat and corn are “self-fertilizing” which means that pollen can be used to fertilize the same plant it came from if carried by an insect or spider walking across it.

Soy bean plants are “self-pollinating” which means that they don’t even necessarily need a creature to carry the pollen and can transfer the pollen itself.  Soba is neither of these things.  Soba plants require a creature to carry it’s pollen to another distinct plant.

This is a more unpredictable method which can make commercial soba crops tricky. The flowers also have a very short lifespan of a few days.  In this small window a bee or fly must gather its pollen and bring it to a distinct plant.

So it secretes special nectar that smells like a chocolate sundae to insects but a pile of manure to humans.  And so while a vast field of soba is an all-you-can-eat buffet for bugs, it smells like one giant train station bathroom to everyone else.

That being said it is still not clear why this particular year the stench has become so intense.  It could be a natural evolution of the plants or perhaps some genetic modification to improve yields. It also may just be the ever increasing number of plants the prefecture handles.

Whatever it is, if you live in a rural area and hear about someone planting buckwheat crops nearby, you may want to consider moving.

Source: Fukui Shinbun Online (Japanese)
Image: Kurt Stueber, Wikipedia