As agriculture is a global-scale academic discipline, globally active people must be trained for agricultural education. Particularly, it is important to train human resources who can lead the development of international standards and rules on a reciprocal basis from a long-term perspective. We have already signed academic exchange agreements with foreign universities and other research institutes and implemented various international exchange and education programs including exchange student systems. But we have yet to train globally active instruction experts. For the training, we should create new overseas bases for international agriculture studies to implement practical global education. In order to effectively promote global education, we will have to build an international 'communicationship' system to expand practical education locations and implement graduate school education on a global campus.
The Kyushu University Graduate School of Bioresource and Bioenvironmental Sciences opened the International Development Research Course (hereinafter referred to as the special course) for foreign students in 1994 and has graduated a total of 199 foreign students in the Master's and Doctor's programs. Since an international program for bioresource and bioenvironmental sciences based on a block module system was adopted as a special program for preferential treatment of government-sponsored foreign students (research students) in FY2006, particularly, we have developed systematic curricula using an intensive-course block module system where a student can acquire two credits in one month, accepting four government-sponsored foreign students in the Master's program and seven on the Doctor's program annually. Meanwhile, 32 foreign students (eight from Vietnam and six each from Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos) are in the Master's program for the course as self-supporting students covered by the JICA JDS (Japanese Grant Aid for Human Resource Development Scholarship). Students from ASEAN countries accounted for 63% of foreign students in the Master's program and 34% of those in the Doctor's program on an average basis over the past five years at the Graduate School of Bioresource and Bioenvironmental Sciences. Vietnamese students have accounted for the largest share of ASEAN students. On an average basis over the past five years, Vietnamese represented 30.4% of special-course foreign students on the Master's program and 11.1% of those in the Doctor's program.
Meanwhile, the Graduate School of Bioresource and Bioenvironmental Sciences implements two annual intensive course programs involving foreign lecturers under a special project (lasting until FY2014) adopted in FY2010, titled "Developing an open problem study program for bioresource and bioenvironmental sciences: Expanding practical sub-major education programs through intensive studies on real overall problems facing agriculture." The program for graduate school students has four problem-solving courses (two credits for each course) for each of three sub majors. The courses give students an opportunity to receive lectures, explore clues to and protocols of solutions to real problems through debate and consider how their knowledge and technology in their respective majors would contribute to these solutions. Finally, they make presentations on solutions and submit reports. The courses are implemented mainly in Japanese. At present, we are planning for Japanese and foreign students to share the courses and hold debates in English. Real problems taken up so far were the most important unsolved problems involving Japanese and ASEAN agriculture: (a) how future risk management should be conducted with consideration given to social benefits and losses from agrichemicals; (b) whether genetically modified crops should be endorsed; (c) biodiversity as seen from fisheries; (d) thinking about Japan's future agriculture: whether farm trade should be liberalized to safely, securely and sustainably ensure food supply; and (e) thinking about water resources problems including how to secure and use water resources, depletion of water resources and water contamination. In the future, we plan to address real problems related closely to Japanese and ASEAN agriculture. Among them, environmental problems include (a) heavy metal contamination (soil degradation) in farmland, (b) forest conservation (forest cutting) and (c) climate change (desertification, carbon dioxide security, etc.). Bioresource problems include (d) securing bioresources and (e) conserving biodiversity. Food system problems include (f) securing food (sustainable supply) and (g) food security and safety. International development problems include (h) trade liberalization (including the Trans-Pacific Partnership initiative) and (i) production and distribution system designs. Biotechnology problems include (j) efficient conversion of bioresources into energy and (k) genetically modified crops. Japanese and ASEAN students will participate in the English problem-solving program (active learning) on these themes to find how knowledge and technology in their respective majors would relate to the real society.
In research over the past decade, we have made major achievements including: the FY2008-2010 MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) internationalization base development project -- International Platform for Asian Agricultural Education; the FY2010-2013 JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) grass roots technical cooperation -- Project for Using ICT for Improving Lower class Farmers' Income; the FY2011-2013 JICA technical cooperation -- Project for Strengthening Tay Bac University; the FY2010-2015 JST (Japan Science and Technology Agency)-JICA international science and technology cooperation project addressing global challenges -- Crop Development in Mountainous Regions of Northern Vietnam; the FY2012-2014 JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) Asia/Africa academic infrastructure development project -- Integrated Water Environment Management Tool for River Basins in Southeast Asian Emerging Countries; the FY2006-2007 MEXT international cooperation initiative -- Indochinese University Outreach; the FY2006-2007 JBIC (Japan Bank for International Cooperation) proposal-based survey project -- Sabah Poverty Reduction Pilot Project; the FY2005-2009 Toshiba International Foundation project -- Supporting the University of East Timor Agriculture Faculty; the FY2006-2008 JSPS Asia/Africa academic infrastructure development project -- Hybrid Rice and Ecosystem Science; and the FY2009 JSPS young researcher exchange support project -- Multiple Follow-up for Agriculture Research and Education. With Vietnam, particularly, we have implemented more than 20 joint research projects including those at the laboratory level over the past five years. The Faculty of Agriculture has energetically implemented field research meeting local needs.
Given this background, Kyushu University's Faculty of Agriculture will create a Vietnam satellite campus at Hanoi University of Agriculture with which we have concluded an academic exchange agreement. The satellite campus will have a lecture room (for some 20 people, with an interactive remote lecture system), two laboratories and two teacher/researcher rooms (as negotiated with Hanoi University of Agriculture in advance). The satellite campus is planned as an overseas office that is not qualified for the graduate school establishment standards (1974 Education Ministry Ordinance No. 28). Education and research operations at the satellite campus are planned as follows:
- Some lectures (including those using an interactive remote lecture system) for students admitted to the International Development Research Course at the Kyushu University Graduate School of Bioresource and Bioenvironmental Sciences
- Research (focusing on field research) by Master's/Doctor's program students admitted to the International Development Research Course at the Kyushu University Graduate School of Bioresource and Bioenvironmental Sciences, and local research instructions by teachers of the Faculty of Agriculture
- Exchange lectures and practices (on environment-conserving agriculture, sciences for solving real problems, etc.) between Hanoi University of Agriculture and the Kyushu University Graduate School of Bioresource and Bioenvironmental Sciences (credits may be recognized according to the two universities' respective standards)
- Field research by Japanese students from the Kyushu University Graduate School of Bioresource and Bioenvironmental Sciences
- Winners of competitive funds for ASEAN-related international projects will be preferentially allowed to use the laboratories. Planned at present are growing new environment-adaptable rice varieties (1st term) and water resources research (2nd term).