CRAZYTANK News Vol. 249：A Place to Discover Self-Created Abundance: A Case Study of Hoken Vegetable's Children's Vegetable Research Group

The 'Hoken Vegetable'（保けん野菜） service, operated by Michikusa LLC with CRAZYTANK as an advisor.

This service goes beyond simply 'selling and delivering delicious and safe vegetables.' It emphasizes 'properly communicating' the diverse values surrounding vegetables and providing customers with a multifaceted experience of new value. Through this, it aims to build relationships that transcend mere capitalism with its partner farmers and customers. Furthermore, it's a continuously evolving service that proactively takes on challenges deemed essential for us living in a future society coexisting with AI. Since its launch, Hoken Vegetable（保けん野菜） has consistently offered a weekly 'learning program for members' children' – the Children's Vegetable Research Group.

Due to the membership conditions, the participation of children varies: some attend weekly, others bi-weekly, and some only join the monthly mini-events. This flexibility allows the program to continuously adapt to the individual circumstances of member families.

Notably, all children participating in this program become comfortable with eating vegetables.

They readily try unfamiliar vegetables, and through the process of learning and observation, they naturally begin to eat them. This multifaceted approach fosters the innate human curiosity and interest in food.

Now, how does this 'Children's Vegetable Research Group' differ from other extracurricular activities?

The key lies in its focus on 'creating one's own abundance through repeated input and output in an environment free from comparison with others.'

Extracurricular activities come in various forms, such as sports, academics, and culture. While all of these involve both input and output for growth, the growth process often includes 'evaluation metrics' to make progress easily visible.

These evaluation metrics are mostly measured by comparing oneself to others, a common practice also found in the school education system.

Whether it's academics, sports, club activities, or committees, an environment where one is 'evaluated through comparison' is almost always present. This is because a clear roadmap exists towards easily recognizable values obtained by 'winning through comparison' in middle school, high school, university, and eventually employment.

However, at CRAZYTANK, based on CEO Takehana's nearly 20 years of research and practice in AI, we believe that these 'evaluation metrics' themselves will lose their value in the future, and we operate under this premise. (The logic behind this has been explained in previous communications, so it will be omitted here.)

When this 'evaluation metric,' which everyone commonly possessed, is lost, humans will likely not rejoice in being freely liberated.

Most of us living today, albeit unconsciously, use this evaluation metric as an 'indicator of the richness of human life,' and since the state of being unconsciously provided with this richness has been the fundamental premise of our lives, its collapse could lead to instability.

Therefore, we believe that instead of the unconsciously given richness, we must now question ourselves about what our own richness is and create it ourselves.

Returning to the 'Children's Vegetable Research Group,' this program involves inputting various information surrounding the topic of vegetables and then continuously engaging in output activities such as growing vegetables themselves, cooking, enjoying food presentation, and creating vegetable cards. It's not about someone else's evaluation but about continuously exploring methods through which one can feel 'rich' and creating that richness independently.

For example, when given the theme of freely thinking about carrot dishes, one child might find inspiration by drawing the final dish, another might first come up with a dish name, and yet another might choose a plate they want to use for presentation and then create the dish.

In each case, they expand the types of output based on what they personally like and then repeatedly engage in input to bring it to life.

We believe that this place, where children repeatedly engage in various input and output activities beyond just cooking and continuously create their own unique sense of fulfillment, is becoming a place to learn the skills and ways of living necessary for coexisting with AI in the future.

We are also planning a special edition of this 'Children's Vegetable Research Group' soon, called the 'Dear Recipe' gathering. This will be an opportunity for children to work with experienced adults to bring their own culinary ideas to life.

While 'Dear' means 'beloved' or 'dear,' this gathering aims to be a space where children discover their own 'Dear' – something precious and personal – through the process of adults gently assisting them in bringing their unique recipes (the output cultivated through their previous input) to fruition, closely supporting their ideas and carefully shaping them.

What can we, as adults, connect with children who will live in a future coexisting with AI? If you have children or are involved in their lives or work, we sincerely hope you will take a moment to consider this.