What is ILFA - The International Life and Food Association ?

INTRODUCTION
The International Life and Food Association (ILFA) is a Japan-based NGO, established by Ms. Yumiko Ohtani in 1982. ILFA originally started with the research and promotion of "Food for a Future cookery for a sustainable future", focusing on millets, a traditional staple crop in Japan. Ohtani has developed a range of modern millet-based foods that are both delicious and healthy not only for human bodies but for the Earth.

Since then, ILFA has extendwed its activities to include domestic and international networking, seminars and workshops and other aspects of life such as farming with its two major basis in Tokyo and Yamagata, a coutryside located in a north-eastern part of Japan.

ILFA has now about 1,000 members who join and supports its activities. It issues a bimonthly newsletter and a quartely magazine.

OBJECTIVES
ILFA aims to reorient people's world - views and lifestyle to those in favor of foods, farming that are self-regeneratinf, sustainable and nature-firnedly to regain both the balance of life and the connection between life, inherit in human-beings and theior relation with nature.

To that end, ILFA has specific objectives, including:

To learn about our body as a natural organism, then feel and apply that view to our everyday life;
To learn about our way of life as inseparable from the natural environment, feel it as such and enjoy such a life;
To reconstruct our views, sence of life, living and values through the learning process;
To receive the feminie principle, inherit in nature and Life.

ILFA emphasizez three key areas for supporting life.
- Farming - a ways for having a share in the form of foods from land
- Cookery - skills to nourish our bodies and minds, and to enhance our vital power
- Medical care - a way to help recovery by supporting our own healing power