Yasushi Hashimoto (Japan) Fujiichi Yoshimoto (Japan)

Minoru Ito (Japan)

Members: Bambang Pramudya (Indonesia) Eun-Woo Park (Korea)

Zhen Lin (Taiwan) Yasuo Otsuka (Japan)

Felino Lansigan (Philippines) Tomoyuki Midoro (Japan)

Akira Sakao (Japan) Shouichi Kouno (Japan)

On behalf of the organizing committee, it is our pleasure to invite you to attend the First Asian Conference for Information Technology in Agriculture to be held at the Big Whale Conference Hall, Wakayama-City, Japan on January 24 - 26, 1998.

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.

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 several 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 that are not common in the USA or EU countries. The rice-dependency and the farming scale are the typical examples. In this conference, sharing such common features, researchers, engineers, administrators and farmers who are interested in the informatization of the Asian and world agriculture, will join together, exchange information and discuss about agroinformatics which will help us e to find some key points to solve the world-wide food problems.

The official language of the conference is English.

The conference will be held at the Big Whale Conference Hall, Wakayama City, Wakayama Prefecture, Japan. Wakayama City is the capital of the Wakayama Prefecture and located at the 50 km south of Osaka City, the third largest city in Japan. There is a frequent shuttle bus service between Wakayama City and the Kansai International Airport and it takes about 40 min. World-famous Japanese historical towns, Kyoto and Nara are within a day trip distance form Wakayama City.

-Agroinformatic Technology

-Farming Management and Information

-Intranet Technology in Regional Agriculture

-Education and Training in Agroinformatics

-Rural Communication and Agroinformatics

-Database for Agriculture

-PC Application Software for Agriculture

-Agroinformatics in Agricultural Extension Services

-Application of the Internet Technology in Agriculture

Scientific Program

The conference will comprise a keynote lecture, a symposium and concurrent oral sessions to be held in two separate lecture rooms. Each oral presentation of the concurrent sessions has 20 minutes including time for discussion. An OHP, a 35-mm slide projector and an LCD projector (VGA and SVGA) will be available. The Internet connection will be also available in the lecture room upon request. The detailed program will be announced soon on our Web site and by fax or e-mail.

The conference will be held at the same time and the same venue as the 10-th annual meeting of the Agroinformatic Networkers of Japan comprising keynote lectures, several symposiums and exhibitions for the latest version of agroinformatic hardware and software from more than forty private companies. The international participants are welcome to attend those programs too.

One who wishes to attend the conference should fill the Registration Form and send it via FAX, mail or e-mail to the conference secretariat. You will be asked to pay the registration fee on-site when you arrive at the conference venue. The fee is US$100 (JPY12000) for one who sends us the registration form before December 20, 1997. The late registration fee is US$150 (JPY18000). The fee covers a copy of the Conference Proceeding, Welcome Party, Farewell Party, Professional Tour, two lunch tickets and refreshments.

The organizing committee has booked a block of rooms at Toei Inn Wakayama for the participants. One who would like to make reservations for the hotel should fill the Hotel Reservation Form and send it via FAX, mail or e-mail to the conference secretariat by December 20, 1997. A single room and a twin room will cost JPY6800 (US$57) per night and JPY12600 (US$105) per night, respectively. The charge includes the service charge but excludes 5% VAT.

The hotel, Toei Inn Wakayama is a standard class hotel and one who prefers a higher-class hotel should contact with the conference secretariat.

Guides for the conference will be standing in the Kansai International Airport on Jan. 23, 1998. Participants are requested to contact one of the guides with a sign for the conference after passing the passport control and custom inspection area. The guide will lead you to the shuttle bus transportation to Wakayama-City. The buss will cost JPY1000 ($US8) and it takes about 40 minutes for you to reach the Wakayama station in Wakayama-City. Other guide at the Wakayama Station again will help you to go to your hotel. Please inform us of your flight no.

Each author who has received an Official Letter of Acceptance to her/his application for the presentation at the conference from the International Programme Committee is requested to submit a full paper that will appear in the Conference Proceeding published at the conference. The manuscript must begin with the ordinal layout of Title, Authors, Affiliations, Address, Abstract (200 to 400 words) and Introduction and end with Reference and Appendix (if necessary). The authors are free to arrange the main part of the manuscript; i.e. not only Materials and Methods or Results and Discussion but also other expressions are allowed, depending on the contents. The text must be single-spaced on A4 size sheets with 30-mm margins and the length should be between 4 and 8 pages.

The manuscript should be printed clearly especially for figures and tables so that they can be photo-reproductive. In addition to the printed manuscript, a 3.5” diskette (IBM or Mac) containing the manuscript file processed with Microsoft Word or ASCII plain text formats should be sent together. An e-mail attached with the manuscript file is also welcome if all the figures and tables can be included in the file. Because we may reformat the original manuscripts to keep the uniform layouts among those, the authors should not be too nervous about the format of their manuscripts as long as photo-reproductive figures and tables are available or they are included in the manuscript files. The materials should be sent to the conference secretariat by Dec. 31, 1997.

December 20, 1997 Early Registration and Hotel Reservation

December 31, 1997 Submission of Full Papers

Setyo Pertiwi (Indonesia) Yu Lian (China)

Paraditta Siripan (Thailand) Ming Huang Lee (Taiwan)

Seishi Ninomiya

Members: Masami Yamada Hajime Kobayashi

Kouki Shio Mamoru Yamanaka

Kazuhiro Nakano Norihiro Nakamura

Secretary General: Seiichi Takigishi

Tokyo Office of the Japanese Society of Agricultural Informatics

E-mail

Affiliation

No. of Accompanying Persons

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