Rice
　Rice is the most familiar crop to Japanese, and has also played an important role in monsoon regions of East and Southeast Asia. Rice can be grown in wet paddy, and dry or burnt fields. Exactly where and how was rice first cultivated and what was its impact on the environment? How was the diversity of rice varieties contributed to stable productivity? We are investigating the history of rice agriculture by looking at cultivated and wild rice in monsoon regions.
Rice paddy of two thousand years ago
(Taruyanagi site, Aomori Prefecture)		 Wild rice in forest (Indonesia)
A girl harvesting improved variety of rice in a rice paddy of Vietnam Dry rice (Laos)
Mugi (wheat, barley, rye, oat)
　Within mugi group (winter cereals), bread wheat ranks first in total world production, while barley (used to make beer), rye, and oat are common. Wheat cultivation is said to have dramatically modified agricultural environments worldwide, but just how much has it affected environments since its domestication in West Asia around ten thousand years ago? In order to clarify this problem, we will employ biological, historical and ethnographical approaches.
Syogabo,China.
(taken by Sato, 2005)

Barley field in Syria, as far as the eyes can reach
(Tanno in April, 2004)
Asia, is eaten by wrapping meat and vegetable
(taken by Tanno in 2004)
Tuber crops
　Cultivation of tuber crops has developed widely in Asia and continental islands of the southwestern Pacific, but not much is known compared to seed agriculture. Our tuber crop research subgroup will try to ascertain when and where tuber crop cultivation began, how it expanded and how it related to environmental change.
Yam harvest Banana
Amorphophallus Cycad

COPYRIGHT(C) SATO Project, Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

.

Agricultureand Environment Interactions in Eurasia Past,Present and Future
-A ten-thousand-year history-
Slash-and burn Agriculture
  Under the influence of environmentalist policy, the agricultural use of fire methods such as slash-and-burn and open burning has been condemned widely as environmentally destructive. Although practices of slash-and-burn and open burning do destroy forests in the short term, they need to be understood in the context of fifty to hundred year-scale of time and its ‘improvement’ of the environment. In the longer term, these practices appear to have acted to conserve forest and mountains, and the livelihoods of people occupying these environments. Fire, as part of agriculture, has been a significant component maintaining the balance between human ecosystem and environment. Our group will study these technologies and the ideologies supporting these practices, reevaluate biological, cultural and ideological diversity of the environment preserved by using fire, and investigate sustainable ways for agriculture and preferred lifestyles for the future.
This project is consiste with 4 research groups.
Rice Mugi Tuber crops Slash-and-burn Agriculture