Today marks the start of FY2022. Since April 2021, JIRCAS has been carrying out the following priority operations under the Fifth Medium and Long-term Plan, in order to solve global food and environmental problems.
 
(1) Effective and intensive implementation of research and development
Towards solving global issues, JIRCAS is strengthening our efforts aiming at the construction of resilient and sustainable system, which harmonizes with the environment and mitigates the effects of climate change, and technology development aiming at increasing productivity and resilience, to address severe food and nutrition problems. 

(2) Enhancement of function as a core center

As the national opinion leader on global food and environment problems, JIRCAS is enhancing its core center function by collecting and analyzing information on agriculture, forestry and fisheries in developing regions and tropical and sub-tropical regions, as well as the global food system which has become complex and diversified, and for broader dissemination of multi-dimensional information domestically and globally. 

The strength of JIRCAS lies in its ability to identify issues and propose bottom-up solutions based on local needs through collaboration with local agricultural research, policy, and development organizations, and to disseminate information for solving global-scale issues through collaboration with international agricultural research, policy, and development partners. As we begin the second year of the Fifth Medium to Long-term Plan, we are reorganizing our initiatives and launching a new project targeting Africa and the Asian Monsoon region in order to further demonstrate the strengths of JIRCAS in our existing operations.

First, the project Development of sustainable land management technologies under extreme weather conditions in drylands (Sustainable land management in drylands) in the Environment Program, and the project Food Program's Technology development towards supporting farmers' decision-making to boost sustainable upland farming system in Africa (Africa upland farming system) in the Food Program have been combined into a single project. In the integrated project, “Development of soil and crop management technologies to stabilize upland farming systems of African smallholder farmers (Africa upland farming system)”, we will combine the experience and knowledge of JIRCAS and its partners in Japan and overseas to develop technologies for sustainable development in wet and dry savanna regions. Through the development of technologies for food production and land management, we aim for social implementation that contributes to the realization of SDGs.

In addition, we will launch a new project, “Facilitating application of strategy MeaDRI to enhance agricultural productivity potential and sustainability in the Asia Monsoon region (Green Asia)” under the Information Program. This project specifically aims to promote the application of fundamental agricultural technologies that contributes to the “Strategy for Sustainable Food Systems, Measures for achievement of Decarbonization and Resilience with Innovation (MeaDRI)” launched by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) in May 2021, through information dissemination and joint research network by establishing an international collaboration system.

Contributors: HAYASHI Keiichi (Director, Environment Program, NAKASHIMA Kazuo (Director, Food Program), IIYAMA Miyuki (Director, Information Program)