Japanese farmers embracing technology to overcome pandemic, aging
Japanese farmers are embracing digital technologies to grow and sell their products as the coronavirus pandemic depresses sales to restaurants and the graying of Japan's population complicates the travel to raise productivity on the labor-intensive sector.
Because the outbreak of COVID-19 this past year, a growing number of farmers and fishermen have drawn focus on their plight through Pocket Marche, an online service that includes farmers, fishermen and consumers.
"A considerable number of farmers shed their sales to eating places as a result of pandemic and flocked to your app to market their items," said Pocket Marche Inc CEO Hiroyuki Takahashi.
In February this past year when Japan was reporting a gradual growth price of coronavirus infections, around 2,000 farmers and fishermen were selling their products to 52,000 authorized customers via Pocket Marche's app.
As the coronavirus situation worsened, the amount of producers employing the service grew to around 5,100, with buyers rising to 300,000.
The app, launched in 2016, allows farmers and buyers to exchange messages.
"The surge in the utilization of our app could slow after the pandemic subsides, but I expect various consumers to keep shopping for via the app because they trust the farmers they bought from after communicating with them," said Takahashi.
Farmers are also embracing new digital systems to improve crop output and salary without additional human labor.
Japan has seen a considerable decline in the number of farmers, due largely to ageing and young people's avoidance of labor-intensive work.
The number of individuals who engaged in farming as their main occupation in Japan stood at 2.4 million in 2000, however the figure dropped to at least one 1.36 million in 2020. Of these, 69.6 percent were aged 65 or higher, according to a survey by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.
Yasufumi Miwa, an expert on agriculture at the Japan Study Institute, said the declining amount of farmers would pose a significant threat to the country's food reliability, calling for the promotion of "intelligent farming" with the application of automation.
Japanese IT firm Routrek Networks Inc started supplying a digital farming system on 2013 that automates irrigation and optimizes fertilization by making use of artificial intelligence.
The business has provided its system to practically 280 farms across the country, increasing productivity at some by over 20 percent.
"Our bodies allows farmers to free time for marketing and other activities while cutting the utilization of normal water and fertilizer by 50 percent compared with conventional farming," Routrek Networks President Shinichi Sasaki explained, adding his company programs to extend into Southeast Parts of asia including Vietnam in a few years.
"I believe our autonomous drip irrigation program will fit Southeast Parts of asia, where farmland is normally found in mountainous areas and split into little plots without adequate water source," said Sasaki.
Another Japanese IT strong, Optim Corp, obtained a patent in 2018 for the world's initial drone with AI technology to pinpoint insects harmful to rice and veggie cultivation, and precisely inject them with pesticide.
The technology substantially reduces labor and the quantity of chemicals required.
The business says its drones cut the volume of pesticide used for growing soybeans by a lot more than 90 percent.
Optim has collaborated with around 1,700 farming groups found in Japan and started exporting its technology to market smart farming. It tangled up with Vietnam Articles and Telecommunications Group in 2019.
Smart farming only makes up about a small part of Japan's farm end result, but the Japan Exploration Institute's Miwa says it's the right route for the country's agriculture, and the central and regional governments should interact to help realize an effective transition.
"I believe smart farming is a normal kind of agriculture in a decade," he said.
Source: japantoday.com
