Message from ZEN-NOH Representatives

We wish to offer our sincerest thanks for the tremendous cooperation and support that the ZEN-NOH Group enjoys in its businesses.

　This fiscal year is the first year of our new three-year Medium-Term Plan. Under this three-year Medium-Term Plan, together with continuing to accelerate autonomous reform efforts based on the fundamental approach of doing everything to benefit our members, consumers, and the general public, we also will deploy initiatives with an eye toward the future five and 10 years from now, to respond to the dramatic changes now underway in production, distribution, and consumption structures as well as the international situation.

　The catchphrase of this three-year Medium-Term Plan is "Unite, Our Challenge, Our Future" This phrase embodies our resolve to build a new future by boldly taking on the challenges of new business domains while also combining our strengths together nationwide with an eye toward the future and fully carrying out autonomous reform initiatives with all of our strength.

　The courses of action that we will aim to have achieved five and 10 years from now are based on the following foundations, on which we will build related concrete measures.
　 First, we will establish and implement strategies for individual produce and product categories, toward systematic and incremental growth in the value of total domestic agricultural production.
　Second, we will firmly develop sales strategies for the individual produce and product categories in which production will expand.
　Third, we will strive to build healthy local communities.

　Fourth, we will develop new international strategies in response to dramatic changes in international conditions.
　To realize these initiatives, we must review the existing functional divisions within the JA Group and control business operational costs throughout the JA Group as a whole. For this purpose, we will engage in full discussions with JAs on matters including optimal allocation of our management resources. In addition, we will expand the businesses of the JA Group and ZEN-NOH and maximize returns to members through establishing integrated group management to demonstrate the comprehensive abilities of the entire ZEN-NOH Group, including subsidiaries.
　Priority measures intended to expand the value of total agricultural production will include use of new technologies to increase productivity, support for addressing shortages in agricultural labor, and utilization of information and communication technologies (ICT). Through such efforts, we will contribute to increasing food self-sufficiency rate and to community development by realizing sustainable agriculture, through providing backing support for business succession for family farms and community management organization and new business entries in the agricultural field.

　Over the past three years, ZEN-NOH has laid the rails on the route toward reform and carried out a wide range of efforts based on them. Over the coming three years, we will continue to move forward powerfully through the concerted efforts of all ZEN-NOH Group management and staff to connect these rails with those to the future that lies ahead.

　We will appreciate your continued cooperation and understanding with regard to the operations of the ZEN-NOH Group in the future.