Purpose of this program
According to latest research activities in Japan, cooking tools such as stone plate, grind stone are discovered, and these are estimated to be ninety five hundred years old. Paddy growing was proved to be done six thousand years ago. Details of crop growing method are not found clear yet, but there must have been farm works such as harvesting, threshing in the process, and such guess was actually proved by finding some stone tools, presumably used as an origin of farm tool for tilling and threshing work. Later on, such tools followed a road to present farm machinery, through some epochs such as use of iron, introduction of animal power, modernized industrial technology, and thereby realized its improvement and innovation. Farm machinery contributed quite greatly to food production. Unit labor time for paddy production per 10 a (are, or one hundred square meters), for instance, was exceeding 200 hours by tens of hours in 1950s whereas that in 2006 was less than 30 hours. Small-scale farm machinery is introduced to kitchen garden, too.
In present Japan, on the other hand, food self sufficiency ratio is reaching only about 40 per cent, due to change in our dietary life, decrease in both farmland area and in the number of farming holds and other reasons. A dramatic change is going on in global food situation, caused by many different reasons such as population growth in developing countries, emerge and growth of new economies like China, energy issues, global warming and so on. Food security is coming to be an urgent requirement based upon common understanding that global food situation will be severer in the future.
In order to fulfill this requirement, development of new varieties and crop growing methods is important, but agricultural tool as well as machinery, which we always have used for agriculture, is indispensable. So, we invited experts in Japan and from abroad to talk about the way how this indispensable tool for farm production, agricultural machinery, should come in, and what kind of role(s) should it bear. We also introduce some innovative technologies in recent years, already in use or useful at actual farm production sites.
Time schedule
Symposium
| 13:00-13:10 | Opening Address |
|---|---|
| 13:10-13:40 | Keynote Speech #1 |
| 13:40-14:10 | Keynote Speech #2 |
| 14:10-14:55 | Special Lecture #1 |
| 14:55-15:15 | Break |
| 15:15-16:00 | Special Lecture #2 |
Speech on latest research topics |
|
| 16:00-16:45 |
Front Line Agricultural Machinery Research and Development by the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization
Dr. YUKUMOTO Osamu Vice President, National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO) |
| 16:45-17:30 |
Farm Work Research, Presents and Prospects
TANIWAKI Ken Research Manager, National Agricultural Research Center, NARO |
| 17:30 | Closing |
Research presentation sessions
| 10:00-10:10 | Opening Address |
|---|---|
| 10:10-11:30 | Session #1
|
| 11:30-12:30 | Session #2
|
| 12:30-13:30 | （Lunch Break） |
| 13:30-14:30 | Session #3
|
| 14:40-16:30 | Display and introduction of developed farm machinery
|
| 16:30 | Closing |
Eligibility
- Symposium : Open
- Research presentation :
- Mainly eligible to research / testing institutions in Japan and universities and abroad, related organizations and companies, administrative institutions, press and others.
Registration
Please find “Registration Form” in the website of this symposium (www.nogyokikai-sympo.com) or contact with secretariat (sec@nogyokikai-sympo.com) for applying registration.
Registration deadline：July 28th, 2009
Contact
Secretary for NARO International Symposium on Agricultural Machinery