With increasing research in agricultural science such research is being increasingly factionalized, and specialized research themes are being developed. To reintegrate the findings of these factionalized research fields and to create new integrated research, The System Agriculture Society was established in 1984. In October 2016, a commemorative conference was held at the University of Tokyo Campus with the theme “Looking back at the past 30 years and planning the next 10 years”. I reviewed the last 30 years and discussed the future activities of The System Agriculture Society from the following perspectives: (1) how has/will The System Agriculture Society contributed/contribute to scientific developments, including separate specialized science fields? (2) How has/will The System Agriculture Society contributed/contribute to international and/or domestic agricultural theories and technologies? (3) How has/will The System Agriculture Society affected/affect the agricultural policies of national and local governments? This paper summarizes my opinions on these issues.

Agricultural systems research has evolved over the last 50 or more years and modeling has been an essential tool which is accomplished from a wide range of disciplines. In this article, the brief history and future perspectives of agricultural systems modeling were summarized and discussed. First, the differences between empirical research approaches with laboratory experiments and systems approaches with modeling and simulation experiments were described. Secondly, the history of agricultural system modeling was overlooked in Japan and overseas and the two purposes of model development were identified; scientific understanding of plant (crop) and animal production systems at ecosystem, community (herd), individual, cell and gene levels and providing information for supporting decision and policy making in agricultural systems at farm, regional, national and global levels. The new research topics to which agricultural system research will be contribute in the future were proposed; (1) development of integrated models for agricultural systems, sustainable food systems and food security systems and (2) development of models using information at molecular level based on system biology.

The general definition of the term "system" is ”A system is a set of interacting or interdependent component parts forming a complex or intricate whole.”,　but "system" has flexible ambiguity. Therefore, with respect to "system", we will refer to definitions not only in the engineering field but also in the biology field, and we will compare the reductionism and the systematic approach. Furthermore, I will discuss the relation between agronomics and agriculture, and I will refer to the necessity of the systematic approach in agronomics and agriculture. Finally, I will discuss future tasks the Japanese Agricultural Systems Society should be.

I thought why the System Agriculture Society was founded and why it could not grow. The reason for being established was probably because agricultural science was divided into small pieces and it was impossible to solve real problems. Academic fields beyond disciplines were needed. However, Japanese do not like systematic thinking. This is because the Japanese were making rice in the island country. The Japanese have been living in a small village to make rice. Also, because it is an island country, it was peaceful than the country in the continent. People who grew up in such an environment kept the peace of the village by not intervening in other fields. Such temperament hindered the development of system agriculture. It was also thought that the research using statistics was system agriculture, but since statistics are also used in other fields, system agriculture never developed significantly. Combined with remote sensing became a powerful field for a while, but now that satellite imagery has become generalized, as typified by Google Earth, it cannot develop system agriculture. System agriculture needs to return to its original intention and conduct research that integrates many fields.

In the Japanese Agricultural Systems Society, the necessary of trying systematization of expertise in interdisciplinary fields has been emphasized. This paper defines “systematization of expertise” as “interdisciplinary analysis”. Two cases on folklore and remote sensing are introduced. In a case of folklore, legends of white bird is analyzed using interdisciplinary relationship on the basis of folklore place names. Toxicological findings are derived on the basis of folklore, adding knowledge of mineralogy, refinement and so on. In a case of remote sensing, the estimated area, which is not able to be validated directly, is evaluated indirectly. An alternative evaluation method for the estimated area is considered, such as an approach based on food supply and demand.