Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics
How can we meet the global need for foodstuffs and agricultural materials under the growing constraints of natural resources and environment as well as the imperfect food distribution such as coexistence of hunger and satiation?
This challenging issue should be addressed in consideration of fundamental socio-economic elements, i.e. unsustainable development and resource depletion, enlargement of poverty and social inequality, and economic and institutional conflicts among developed and developing countries.
Our department has a couple of key principles on graduate education and academic research for the agricultural and resource economics of the new age.
- Global perspective: Our research concerns have become broader and more internationalized beyond the traditional agricultural economics; intergenerational resource conservation, multifunctionality of agriculture, global food system, harmonization of international trade system, rural development and community, while encompassing the new disciplines of other applied economics such as development economics, environmental economics and institutional economics.
- Local perspective: We are paying attention to rural reality of individuals and community. Our fieldwork approach, through which we have accumulated academic knowledge and have established reserch networks, is one of effective methods for our study aims to compare Japanese and overseas agricultural economies.