Advanced technology to revive Japan's farming sector

An agricultural plantation project in Hokkaido, founded by JFE Engineering Corporation, has two big greenhouses, covering a total area of 1.5 hectares.

In addition to Mesclun greens and tomatoes, they grow more varieties of vegetables and fruits.

The greenhouses, which are totally controlled by advanced cultivation control system, use the "Gas engine tri-generation system".

It is a newly invented technology by JFE Engineering Corporation. The engine generates electricity, heat and CO2 from natural gas.

Exhaust gas is filtered and pure CO2 is made and sent to houses though pipes and ejected by blast machine.

The machine also blows warm air.

Hot water is stocked in tanks and sent though pipes to heat up plant as needed.

It helps to grow not only normal tomato but special sweeter one.

"One of our purposes of introducing this technology is to establish new agricultural business practice which attracts Japanese young people to agriculture," said Koichi Kimura, President, J Farm Tomakomai Corporation.

The farming sector in Japan is facing manpower crunch. The young people do not want to join farming because they think old style agricultural work is dirty and hard.

But technology-oriented plantation may be able to attract young people and change the future of Japanese agriculture.

JFE Engineering Corporation is also aiming to overseas deployment of this plantation system.

The largest retailer in Asia, AEON group has retail network comprising more than 250 consolidated subsidiaries and 26 affiliated companies ranging from supermarkets to shopping malls.

One and a half hour away from the central of Tokyo, There is a farmland in Ushiku city, Ibaraki prefecture Japan.

This farm is managed by AEON Agri Create, a wholly owned subsidiary of AEON Group.

The total area of AEON Ushiku farm is 16 hectare including one hectare greenhouse and facility. The farm is cultivating vegetables such as cabbage, Chinese cabbage and spinach.

Since AEON has entered in agriculture in 2009, the company manages 14 farms in Japan.

AEON is working on data utilization in agriculture.

By the visualization of know-how and knowledge of the field in agriculture utilizing IT, it greatly improves the agricultural skills and techniques in the field.

"This mobile phone app collects data of growth and production operation results. The information is stored in the Cloud database, shared and observed in real time with all the 14 farms." said Jun Hamamoto, Head of Ushiku Farm, AEON Agri Create Co., Ltd.

This is the SaaS based solution for agricultural production management system developed by Fujitsu.

All the photos and comments are updated timely from the mobile app. The production management system is also connected with the censors that collect data from the field.

"This is the censor console. There is a probe connected underneath the ground. The censor captures information about EC, PH and moisture percentage of the soil. And the camera on the above is taking continuous pictures from the fixed point observation. The conditions of the soil and the situation of growth are both linked together and analyzed as the big data," said Yasuaki Fukunaga, President, AEON Agri Create Co. Ltd.

By analyzing the data accumulated from the field, we can prevent the repeating failure and maximise the production. This can improve our technical capabilities in farming," added Fukunaga

Utilizing of data makes possible to optimize the scheduling of tasks, such as watering, fertilising and harvesting.

This is the new form of agriculture AEON aims in the future.