Japan: When the Internet meets agriculture

The per capita arable land area of Japanese farmers is limited, and there is no large-scale agriculture like that of the United States. With the increasing aging of Japanese society, the agricultural population is decreasing, and the average age of agricultural employment has reached about 67 years old. Japanese media call it "grandpa and grandma agriculture". Under such circumstances, the use of Internet technology to revitalize agriculture is growing louder and louder.

In an interview with reporters a few days ago, Takehiko Kato, director of the Japan International Institute of Social Economics, pointed out that in the future, information technology, including Internet technology, is expected to lead the new trend of Japanese agriculture and realize the "green digital revolution" of agriculture ". However, the use of Internet and other technologies to develop agriculture is difficult for small-scale farmers to promote, and the effect is more ideal with legal person management as the main body. A favorable sign in Japan's agricultural sector is that the number of agricultural production laws has been increasing over the years, reaching 14333 as of 2014.

"The advantage of using technologies such as the Internet is that it can digitize the technology and knowledge accumulated by skilled farmers, which is conducive to the inheritance of the next generation of farmers or agricultural enterprises," Kato said. Meteorological big data and crop growth data collected through high-precision sensors can also be sent to farmers or managers in real time, so that they can water and fertilize reasonably.

In addition, real-time monitoring of consumer trends through the Internet can seize the best opportunity to produce and sell best-selling crops or agricultural products; using the global satellite positioning system, unmanned tractors can achieve 24-hour farming on large-scale farms, effectively solving the problem of insufficient agricultural population; and using big data analysis, it can also extract a lot of information that has not been clarified so far, such as discovering the correlation between meteorological conditions and the occurrence of diseases and insect pests.

Takeshiko Kato pointed out that with the popularity of smart phones and flat terminals, mobile phone client services containing cloud system analysis will be provided to agricultural workers, thus improving farm management efficiency and agricultural farming results. By using the technology of recording the production process of agricultural products, the data of the production process can be used as a part of food information and directly provided to consumers for reference, so as to completely realize the traceability management of agriculture, which not only helps to ensure the stability of food safety and quality, but also makes consumers feel at ease.

He stressed that the use of information technology such as the Internet to develop agriculture can stimulate the participation of various industries, including the manufacturing industry, so it has created business opportunities for many industries.

The Japanese government has always focused on the development of high-tech agriculture. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries calls agriculture using robots and information technology "smart agriculture", and strives to develop high-quality labor-saving agriculture, and has listed 115.3 billion yen (1 U.S. dollar About 123 yen) special budget. The government is now gearing up to develop a "roadmap" for smart agriculture ".

He pointed out that the chapter "Promoting Scientific and Technological Innovation and Robot Revolution" in the "Japan Revival Strategy" revised by the Japanese government in May this year specifically introduced "wearable machines" supporting agriculture, and the "Realization of Intelligent Agriculture Research Association" composed of many companies and institutions also proposed projects such as automatic walking systems for agricultural machinery, strawberry harvesting and packing robots, weeding robots, and automatic cleaning robots for livestock houses.

Kato Takehiko believes that because Japan's agriculture has just begun to introduce information technology such as Internet technology, it is not yet possible to fully evaluate the economic effects, but in terms of improving production efficiency and high added value of agricultural products, Internet agriculture has great potential.

2015-07-16 10:42 | Author: | Source: Sichuan Rural Daily