www.asianfarmers.org

Last May 25, Organic Farmers’ groups in Japan, who form part of the National “Change Agriculture!” movement, conducted “The International symposium to think about agriculture and environment”. This was held in Kobe, and participated by about 300 people. Our partner, Ainokai, joined this event, which one of civli society’s preparatory activities for the G8 summit.

The participants issued the statement below. We hope you can consider this appeal as well as you try to influence G8 leaders who are currently meeting in Japan today.

Kobe Declaration on “Organic agriculture is to solve the global environment problems”Announced at “The International symposium to think about agriculture and environment” May 25th, 2008.
By the National “Change Agriculture!” movementWe propose “The policy of sustainable agriculture, food, and environment issue based on organic agriculture” for the themes of global warming, biodiversity, food crises, low-carbon/sustainable society, discussed at the G8 summit in Toyako, Japan 2008.

The global scale crises like abnormal climate, food and resource price crises, water resource depletion, are worsening today. In order to solve these crises, we focus on the connection of agriculture, food and environment.

The world’s croplands and pastures, which occupies about one third of the earth surface, have supported human society for centuries. They have produced food, provided clothing and housing for people, formed cultures and conserved local environment. That was the human relationship with the Earth.

However, the modern agriculture was built into modern industrial and business structures, which have pushed industrialization and global trade to extreme. Thus, today’s industrial agriculture takes part in destroying the environment. We aim to overcome the modern industrial society depending on the limited resources, and the heavy market economy centered society based on WTO structure, and to transform into sustainable recycling-based, cooperating society.

We believe the sustainable organic agriculture, that is what real agriculture should be, is the starting point to achieve that goal.

We propose here the issues that governments of Japan and G8 countries should work on to improve the global environment.

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Bonded together by the theme “Inochino Rizumu Wotorimodosou” (Regain the Rhythm of Life), around 400 people attended the national convention organized by Ainoukai (an AFA member in Japan) last February 2-3 at the Minabe Loyal Hotel in Minabe-cho, Wakayama prefecture, which is famous for its citrus and plum.

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Education

Ainokai held its bi-annual 10-day farming course in March and in August, practical farming course in April to November (every Saturday), and forest management seminar in October and in December.
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A seminar-workshop entitled “Developing AFA’s Concept on Pro-Small Farmer Marketing and Trading” was held in Aichi and Mie, Japan last July 3-10, 2006, hosted by Ainokai, an AFA member in Japan, in partnership with AFA, AsiaDHRRA, and JaDHRRA.
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One of the most interesting high-technology yet organic farms visited during the AFA seminar workshop in Japan was Mr. Harada’s farm, consisting of an orchid green house using in-vitro fertilization and a rice field. Mr. Harada used to be a manager of Ainokai 15 years ago. There, he learned a lot of technologies, which he still uses to date.
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On May 2, Mr. Samir Topno from India arrived at Ainou to have training on organic farming. He has been working on rural development in India under the Allahabad Agricultural University as an assistant professor since 2000. Currently, since January 2006, he has been working as a manager in Training Program in Organic Farming for Rural Youth under the college of continuing and non formal education in the same University.
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Zekoku Ainoukai, a farmer organization in Japan devoted to organic farming and an AFA member, started this year’s preparation course for future farmers last April 8. The course is for Japanese citizens who are interested in farming, most of whom are from the city and are still working in companies.

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