The Dutch biofarming company Waterland International and a Japanese federation of farmers made an agreement in March 2012 to plant and grow camelina on 2000 to 3000 ha in Fukushima Prefecture. The seeds were to be used to produce biofuel, that could be used to produce electricity. According to director William Nolten, the region had a big potential for the production of clean energy. Some 800.000 ha in the region could not be used to produce food anymore, and after the nuclear disaster because of fears for contamination, the Japanese people refused to buy food produced in the region, anyway. Experiments would be done to find out whether camelina was capable of extracting radioactive caesium from the soil. An experiment with sunflowers had no success.