Japan | Community resilience in crisis areas

2026 Top Agri-food Pioneers: Mayumi Sato

Mayumi Sato is dedicated to building equitable agrifood systems and climate-resilient societies in conflict-affected scenarios. She has spent over eight years working with crisis-affected communities, including refugees from Myanmar, drought-affected farmers in Ghana and agricultural defenders in SWANA to fight for food security and community rights during humanitarian crises. She has led research in Laos to protect women in forest communities, building gender and social safeguards to inform policies around forest governance. In Vietnam, she documented how Mekong Delta fishers adapt to rising sea levels through sustainable rice-fish farming. Sato recently completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge, where she examined how environmental defenders regenerate land through cooperative farming, foraging, seed sharing and agroecology in restricted civic space. Sato is a National Geographic Explorer and serves as a Young Scientist to the World Food Forum convened by the FAO, where she provides scientific evidence and technical knowledge on how to build gender-transformative and equitable agrifood systems.