Our mission and Aso
The word “Landscape” means not only scenery but also contains biodiversity as well as culture, we believe.
Aso is the one of the first National Park, and whole area (7 local districts, ca.1,080㎢) are designated as GIAHS site by FAO.
The landscape of Aso area consists of farming fields, meadows, forests, rivers and villages.
Especially the meadow is unique in Aso.
In ordinary time, every house had few cattle as labor instead of tractor.
And people kept meadow to raise them, “burning off a field” is carried out in early spring as a management technology of meadow which is like the saving of labor to remove shrub by burning off a field.
Cattle cultivate the farming fields, and left manure which made soil fertile. The forest have been kept by sustainable use for wood fire and building materials. This traditional life which has been continued over 1000 year formed the landscape of Aso.
Landcape
Farming
Inisiative
The landscape which was created through traditional way of living, when there were no fossile fuel and materials. Modern way of living is affecting to this landscape these days.
Now our landscape is in dangour. If we don’t do anything, we fear that we will lose our valuable landscape.
So this is why we decided to do something. We don’t know exactly what we shoud & can do.
But we propose “Landscape Farming” as a new categoly of farming in our area, and see what we can do to herritate our landscape to the next generation.