AFITA, an Emerging Partner of APAN in Asian Agriculture - Asian Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture - Byong-Lyol Lee*, Seishi Ninomiya** * Korea Meteorological Administration, KOREA ** National Agricultural Research Center, JAPAN 1. BACKGROUND OF AFITA Though the population on the earth has not been really exploded yet, we can see clues of food crisis; that is, the lack of food in some of the developing countries is chronic and even major powers are facing the difficulties to balance the productivity and the environmental requirement. As the balance of the food supply and demand is now inevitably under the strategy of the world trading mechanism and the control of the power, it is almost meaningless to solve the crisis within a country. Only the international sharing and cooperation for sustainable food productivity on the basis of information sharing and mutual understanding could bring the solution. กก We believe that the information technology can surely contribute to the solution. First, the information communication technology such as the Internet that is now dynamically changing our life style and social consciousness, will provide us a best tool for the information sharing and mutual communication. Second, we should not forget the possible contribution of information science to effective and stable production by using models such as crop growth prediction and decision support. Thus, the importance of the studies on agroinformatics is undoubtedly increasing. The Asian countries are keeping the highest growth rate in the world and the requirement on food is abruptly changing from quantity to quality. In addition, the Asian countries have their individual agricultural features. Researchers, engineers, administrators and farmers who are interested in the informatization of the Asian and world agriculture join together to exchange information and to discuss about agroinformatics which will help us to find some key points to solve the world-wide food problems. 2. STATUTES OF AFITA AFITA is to be an autonomous, non-political, non-profit making Association, coordinating body and catalyst of its National Member Organization (NMO). It aims to promote the exchange of information and experience, the development of knowledge in the area of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in agriculture in order to enhance the competitiveness of Asian and to promote the awareness of ICT in agriculture. Full membership of AFITA is to be vested in one body in any Asian country representing sufficiently wide national interest or activities relating to quality. To qualify for Full Member status, the national body must be, as the Federation itself an autonomous, non-political, non-profit making association with a membership of at least 10 members. 3. ORGANIZATION OF AFITA The General Assembly is composed of the nominated representatives of each Full Member and the members of the Executive, which consists of the Officers of AFITA. The General Assembly is the supreme body of the Federation and shall comprise delegation from all the National Member Organization. It is to be held every two years and chaired by the President. At a meeting of the General Assembly, each NMO shall have one and only one vote. Each NMO shall normally be represented at meetings of the General Assembly by its President who will cast the vote on the NMO's behalf 4. AGENDA FOR THE NEXT TWO YEARS (1) The agricultural systems in Asian countries are quite different from those in US and European countries and the agroinformatics in Asia should be specialized and modified, considering their differences. (2) The collaboration on researches and developments in agroinformatics over the Asian countries are really important and should be performed, considering the site-specific and common problems. (3) We can expect agroinformatization to bring the solutions for the rapid increase of senior farmers and small scale farming that are the common problems being shared by the Asian agriculture. (4) In Asian countries, we can not help encountering bureaucratic sectionalism, whenever we plan practical agroinformatization. (5) More importance can be put on hardware than on software, so that the contents on information systems are often rather poor. This is partly because there do not exist a plenty of contents to install. (6) Free or reasonably cheap information should be provided by public services. (7) The communication infrastructure is still poor in some of the Asian countries and the distance between agroinformation system and farmers is still long. (8) Only Japan and Korea have the domestic organizations for agroinformatization. Other countries should start the preparation for such domestic organizations. Taiwan and Indonesia are now under consideration. (9) The AFITA members can be classified into three groups; a group of administrators, a group of software developers and a group of agroinformation scientists. We should organize such groups and each group should promote its own activities. (10)We should consider the expansion of the AFITA to Oceanic countries and the change of the title. 5. APAN, FUTURE COLLABORATOR OF AFITA APAN is willing to serve as the basic frame for promoting sustainable development of the agriculture in Asia-Pacific area by providing the network of the researchers that connects each other. As the agricultural research is based upon the synthesis of all learning, the cooperation with the scientists of all fields on APAN will contribute to the development of agricultural researches. Since AFITA activities expected are rather S/W-oriented, it definitely needs the assistance from high-speed networks to enhance communications with end-users. The APAN, in this sense, will be a promising partner as a frame network for communications in Asia, where it suffers to great extent from the lack of high performance networks between countries, especially with developing countries.