Japanese Agricultural Heritage Sites: Global Asset
Graziano da Silva highlights the importance of "living agricultural museums"
FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva met with the Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan, Yoshimasa Hayashi, at FAO Headquarters today.
Graziano da Silva showed his appreciation for the country’s support to FAO and for Japan’s ratification of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. Japan will become the 130th Contracting Party of the Treaty later this month.
FAO Director-General also expressed his admiration for the Japanese Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Sites (GIAHS), remarkable specific agricultural systems and landscapes that have been created, shaped, and maintained by generations of farmers based on diverse natural resources, using locally adapted management practices.
One of these locations is in the Noto peninsula, a site characterized by a mosaic of socio-ecological production managed systems referred to as satoyama, terrestrial-aquatic landscape ecosystems comprising secondary woodlands, plantations, grasslands, farmlands, pasture, irrigation ponds and canals, and satoumi, marine-coastal ecosystems comprising seashore, rocky shore, tidal flats and seaweed/eelgrass beds.
The Director-General also explained the Organization’s desire to increase the food safety capacity, adopting lessons from Japan’s rich experience in this field.
Watch a video interview with H.E.Yoshimasa Hayashi