Promotion of Smart Agriculture

Issues in agriculture of Japan

From 2015 Census of Agriculture and Forestry (MAFF)

Age structure of occupied population in agriculture (2015)

○ Facing a severe problem of labor shortage by decrease and aging of farmers○ Enlarging average cultivated acreage per farm demands innovations to break the limit of work area per person

※ Agriculture occupied population: Persons engaged only in agriculture and those engaged in agriculture for more days that other businesses (age ≧15) during the one-year survey

○ Farmer population 4.14 million (1995）→ 2.10 million (2015)

From Census of Agriculture and Forestry (MAFF)

= The largest rank in 1995 is ≧10 ha because of lack of detailed classification data.= Values in parentheses are numbers of management bodies (farms) in the rank.

○ Average cultivated acreage per management body (farm) has been steadily enlarged (1.6 ha in 1995 → 2.5 ha in 2015)

4.4

8.2

0 20 40 60 80 100

1

2

3

4

5

10～20 20～30 30～50

（％）

1995

平成 年

平成 年

≧100ha50～ 100

(864)

(1,590)

2005

2015

＜ 1 ha21.4

【 ≧5 ha: 57.9%】

【 ≧5 ha: 43.3%】

【≧5 ha: 34.2%】

Ratios of accumulated cultivated acreage of each rank of farm scale

Agriculture occupied population: 2.1MAverage age: 66.4

Ratio in agriculture occupied population

(right scale)

Less than age 50251K

(12.0%)

15-29 30-39 40-49 50-59 60-69 ≧70Age

0

1.0

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

Popu

latio

n (m

illion

)

1.2 1.33M≧age 65

(63.5%)1～544.4

5～107.7

≧10 ha26.5

17.4(1,151K)

39.3(765K)

9.2(51K)

8.0(22K)

5.4(8K)

7.7(7K)

8.7(5K)

11.9(741K)

30.2(531K)

10.3(9K)

10.3(52K)

10.1(25K)

7.2(10K)

11.8(6K)

1

○ Ensuring manpower becomes difficult although labors such as selection of fruits and production and decoration of “bento (lunch boxes)” depend on a large number of employees.

○ Dangerous and hard work depending on manpower that can hardly be mechanized still remains in the sites of agriculture, forestry and fisheries.

○ Breaking the limit of working acreage per person is desired because of decrease of agriculture occupied population.

Issues in agriculture, forestry and fisheries and food industries of Japan

○ Procedures requiring experts such as operation of tractors disturb participation of youth and women.

○ There are many procedures dependent on manpower, particularly that of skillful persons in agriculture, forestry and fisheries. Labor reduction and ensuring manpower become important issues

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・ Automation of operation by advanced technologies such as robot tractors and water-management system operated by smartphones enables scale-up of business.

・ ICT technologies enables succession of agricultural skills of expert farmers to young farmers.

・ Highly managed agriculture will be realized by accurate prediction of growth and diseases to utilize and analyze sensing data, etc.

“Agriculture Technology” × “Advanced Technology”

Smart Agriculture

Smart AgricultureAdvantage of agriculture of Japan advanced technologies

Effects of Smart Agriculture

40% reduction of working time

Drone

Optimized manuring and pest control based on sensing

data of the whole field

Assist suit

Only a half of the usual power is required

in lifting operation

・ Expert skills corresponding to local characteristics such as climate and soil

・ Delicious breeds and brands with wide variety reflecting local characteristics

・ Safe and secure agriculture products matching with consumers’ needs

Unmanned operation system

Fruits thinned by experts

Expert farmer

Beginner

Utilized in study and teaching for new farmers

Converting to formal

knowledge by ICT technology

Consideration

Robot tractor

3

The agricultural data collaboration platform（WAGRI）

Public dataTo provide various data such as weather, land or map (may be charged.)

WeatherAPI※

FarmlandAPI

MapAPI

SoilAPI

Growth prediction

API

StatsAPI

SensorAPI

Farmers, etc.

Agricultural machinery manufactureＡ

Agricultural machinery manufactureＢ ICT vendor Ｃ ICT vendorＤ

Farmers, etc. select and utilize related services based on their business style, etc.

provide data and system through WAGRI

Privatecompany

Privatecompany

Privatecompany

Privatecompany NARO Govern

mentPrivate

company

Develop new agricultural services by utilizing data and services through WAGRI

Data and system

providers

Data and system users

○ Agricultural Data Collaboration Platform（WAGRI）has been built as collaboration platform ofprivate companies which provides agricultural ICT services.

○ Through WAGRI, data and system on climate, farmland, geographical information, etc. areprovided which promote evolving new services by private companies to support farmers selectand utilize advanced services.

※API: Application Programming Interface. Coding conventions to relate application programs.

S t r u c t u r e o f t h e A g r i c u l t u r a l D a t a Co l l a b o r a t i o n P l a t f o r m

4

○WAGRI will be expanded to “Smart food chain system” which coversprocessing, distribution and consumption (logistics) as well as production○ Smart production based on needs and demands will realize food lossreduction and labor hours reduction

Developing smart food chain targeting which covers processing, distribution and consumption as well as production

Publicize the data

Privatecompany

Privatecompany NARO Govern

ment

（present）production centered system

（future）expansion to processing, distribution and

consumption

Data of processing

and distribution

Data of marketing

and consumption

Data of export

manufactures distributer

ICT vender, etc.

Privatecompany

Privatecompany

retailer

The agricultural data collaboration platform（WAGRI）

Farmers, etc.

Agricultural machinery manufacture ICT vendor

Develop new agricultural services by utilizing data and services through WAGRI

S m a r t F o o d C h a i n （ e x p a n s i o n o f t h e p l a t f o r m )

WeatherAPI

FarmlandAPI

MapAPI

SoilAPI

Growth prediction

API

StatsAPI

SensorAPI

Government

5

Project for Accelerating Installation of Smart Agriculture＜Point of the Project＞To realize drastic increase of productivity of farmers, it is urgently requested to install smart agriculture by introduction and utilization of advanced technologies such as robots, AI, IoT, etc., which have been markedly developed recently. This project promotes optimization of the smart agriculture technology by installation and demonstration of the advanced technologies at the present time and supports the efforts including providing information to accelerate promotion of the installation.＜Target of the Project＞Almost everyone involved in agriculture will be able to practice agriculture utilizing data (until 2025).

＜Details of the Project＞ ＜Image of the Project＞

１．Installation and demonstration of advanced technologies○ To optimize the smart agriculture technologies, in cooperation with NARO, farmers, private companies, local governments, etc., the program supports installation of technologies of robots, AI, IoT, etc., which are the advanced technologies at the present time to the production sites, and efforts to demonstrate ideal smart agriculture.

２．Provision of information to promote installation○ NARO will arrange the data and activity records thus obtained as preceding cases in the aspects of technology and management, and will provide them as information to support management decision to introduce the technologies by farmers. NARO also supports efforts to contribute consultation and technical training of farmers.

Accelerating installation of “smart agriculture”

Optimized cultivation management using yield-

monitoring combines

Instances of advanced technologies from production to shipment

Business management system

Business managementHarvest

Plowing and land grading

Cooperated work with automated tractors

ICT agriculture construction equipment

Automated rice planting machine

Rice direct seeding using drones

Transplanting and sowing

Automated transplanting machine of

“negi (green onion)”

Automated water management system

Automated remote-controlled mowing machine

Cultivation management

Tomato-harvesting robots

Remote sensing and manuring using drones

Manuring

6