Kubota to release self-driving rice planting machine in October
Kubota Corp. said Wednesday it will release a rice-planting machine with automated driving functions in October.
Agriculture
Agriculture
Satellite monitoring to cut Japan's reliance on USDA farm data
Japan intends to produce its own forecasts of global farm production based on satellite observations, seeking to reduce reliance on agricultural data gathered by the U.S.
Will ‘smart agriculture’ lead to brighter future for Japan’s farming?
Expectations have risen high for “smart agriculture” that makes full use of IoT (internet of things) to connect various elements through the internet, artificial intelligence and robots.
Biotech firm, WFP team up for Rohingya
A Tokyo-based biotechnology venture, Euglena Co., has formed a business tie-up with the World Food Program to introduce a cultivation technique for mung beans to Bangladesh and deliver the beans to Rohingya Muslims who have fled to the country.
Exec getting close to making ‘Tokyo cacao’ chocolates
The president of a chocolate company and a farmer on Hahajima island, one of the Ogasawara Islands about 1,000 kilometers south of central Tokyo, have joined forces to grow cacao trees on Hahajima, with plans to sell their “Tokyo Cacao” chocolate this autumn.
Fukushima town works to revive herb vital to its frozen rice cake delicacy
A breeze rustles through leaves of oyamabokuchi plants on a farm in Katsurao, a village in Fukushima Prefecture.
‘Smart farming’ plows ahead
“Smart farming,” which brings together cutting-edge robotics and artificial intelligence, could hold the key to an agricultural resurgence in a nation of graying farmers and workers reluctant to toil in soil.
Craft distilleries making their mark amid Japanese whisky boom
A sweet aroma wafted through the air as unblended malt whisky gushed from a storage cask at Hokkaido’s Akkeshi Distillery in the freezing rural north of Japan in December.
Japan's aging hunters look for fresh blood to solve boar woes
When the world rang in 2019, it also prepared to usher in the Year of the Boar. But in Sasayama, a picturesque, historical city of about 42,000 nestled in rural Hyogo Prefecture about an hour by train from Osaka Station, the wild boar is a symbol of pride, part of a famous local dish and a bane to farmers. It’s also a highly intelligent, aggressive animal that hunters like Yuji Enso have long pursued and respected.
Tochihime strawberries ‘melt in mouths’
Tochigi Prefecture has boasted of the largest strawberry production in Japan for 50 years in a row. There is even a strawberry called Tochihime that is sold only in the prefecture.