Agenda for the next two years suggested and discussed during the AFITA 98

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 the 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 classifies 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.