NEWS

2020.11.01

The 24th AJI Frontier Seminar on “Envision of a Climate Change Countermeasures from Farmland: Strategies and Policies of Agricultural Cooperatives in Sumatra, Indonesia”

On October 26, 2020, the 24th AJI Research Frontier Seminar took place online. This time, Dr. Fitrio Ashardiono (Assistant Professor, College of Policy Science, Ritsumeikan University) delivered a presentation on a pressing issue entitled “Envisioning Climate Change Countermeasures for Farmland: Strategies and Policies of Agricultural Cooperatives in Sumatra, Indonesia”, in Japanese. After conducting a comparative study of the tea industry in Asia including Uji tea in Kyoto, Dr. Fitrio proposed the “terroir approach” as solution to the challenges of coping with climate change. In this presentation, he demonstrated the effectiveness of his proposal through expanding his scope into the Indonesian coffee industry. "Terroir" is a term that refers to the close relationship between local production areas and products, mainly in the wine industry. Dr. Fitrio emphasized the point that this cultivation method which takes into account conditions such as the climate, soil, and the terrain of the cultivation areas is also particularly effective in the tea and coffee industries that are vulnerable to climate change. He focused on the coffee industry in the Solok region of Sumatra and demonstrated that a model for the terroir production of local coffee varieties can mitigate the impact of climate change in near future. After the presentation, the participants enthusiastically exchanged their views on the initiatives that will be needed in the future to make use of and expand the terroir approach in practice.

Dr. Fitrio delivering his presentation