In November 2020, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) published the “Food Outlook – Biannual Report on Global Food Markets”. The report includes a special feature entitled “Recent trends in food import bills and export earnings: the COVID-19 challenge” by FAO's Dr. Josef Schmidhuber who gave a keynote lecture on the impact of COVID-19 on the global food system at the JIRCAS 50th Anniversary Symposium held on November 10, 2020.

Understanding how the habitats of global species have changed in the past and how they will be affected by future climate change and land-use change scenarios due to agriculture and urbanization is necessary in developing effective conservation strategies. A paper published in Nature Communication shows that many species have lost their natural habitat areas due to long-term increase of land-use in tropical biodiversity hotspots.

JIRCAS holds the International Symposium 2020 on "The role of international collaboration in agricultural research to address the challenges in the post-COVID-19 global food system” in a webinar format today, November 10th (Tue) from 15:00 to 17:30 Japan time.

A report of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Workshop on Biodiversity and Pandemics stated that pandemics have their origins in diverse microbes carried by animal reservoirs, but their emergence is entirely driven by human activities. The report also pointed out that the root cause of a pandemic is the same as the global environmental changes that cause biodiversity loss and climate change, such as land-use change, agricultural expansion and intensification, and wildlife trade and consumption.

It's been almost a year since the new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) was first confirmed in Wuhan, China at the end of 2019. Since then, the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has rapidly spread around the world due to movement of people and economic activities. The impact of the COVID-19 health and economic crisis has swept the globe, particularly impacting vulnerable societies with limited access to the social insurance system, rapidly widening poverty and inequality, and the likelihood of a hunger pandemic has also become a serious concern. With the COVID-19 pandemic, concerns about global food security have increased, and the global food system has come to the fore as a channel of transmission. In discussing the impact of COVID-19 on the food system, distribution, consumption and production are of particular interest. On November 10, 2020, JIRCAS will hold a symposium on the theme of COVID-19 and the global food system to commemorate the 50th anniversary of its founding. The registration deadline is on November 4th until 5:00 PM. Please register and join us.

It has been 50 years since the Tropical Agriculture Research Center (TARC), the predecessor of the Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences (JIRCAS), was established in 1970. At this turning point, we have published a commemorative magazine of our 50th foundation anniversary in order to summarize the history of organizational changes and activities so far as we aim to further leap toward a new era.

On November 10, 2020 (Tue), JIRCAS will hold an international symposium on “The role of international collaboration in agricultural research to address challenges in the post-COVID-19 global food system” to commemorate its 50th founding anniversary. We are pleased to announce the program with a brief introduction of the speakers and panelists.

The CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security Research (CCAFS), an international network of agricultural research institutes, has published "Perspective aricle: Actions to reconfigure food systems" in the journal Global Food Security. According to the article, reconfiguration of the food systems must include rerouting trajectories and appropriate intervention targeting must take into account the diversity of farmers and agricultural systems.

On October 19th, Bill Gates updated his blog with details on his current book, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need”, and announced that the book will be published on February 16, 2021. The book aims to explain the science of climate change, propose a plan to build the tools that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero, and suggest concrete steps that governments, companies, and individuals can take to make it happen.