As the average age of farmers globally creeps higher and retirement looms, Japan has a solution: robots and driver-less tractors.
The G7 agriculture ministers meet in Japan’s northern prefecture of Niigata this weekend for the first time in seven years to discuss how to meet increasing food demand as aging farmers retire without successors.
With the average age of Japanese farmers now 67, Japanese Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Hiroshi Moriyama is to outline his idea of replacing retiring growers with Japanese-developed autonomous tractors and backpack-carried robots.
US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has warned that left unchecked, aging farmers could threaten the ability to produce the food the world needs.
The average age of growers in developed countries is now about 60, according to the UN.
Japan plans to spend ￥4 billion (US$36 million) in the year through March next year to promote farm automation and help develop 20 different types of robots, including one that separates over-ripe peaches when harvesting.
“There are no other options for farmers but to rely on technologies developed by companies if they want to raise productivity while they are graying,” said Makiko Tsugata, senior analyst at Mizuho Securities Co in Tokyo. “The government should help them adopt new technologies.”
Moriyama said at the beginning of a bilateral meeting with Vilsack yesterday that he wants to serve the guests premium Kobe beef, which Japan wants to promote overseas.
The amount of uncultivated farmland in Japan almost doubled in the past two decades, reaching 420,000 hectares last year, as farmers retired, data from the ministry show.
About 65 percent of growers are 65 years or older. The dearth of young people willing to take up farming has increased concerns that Japan’s reliance on food imports will deepen, with the nation already getting about 60 percent of its food supplies from overseas.
“Aging farmers are threatening the sustainability of agricultural communities in Japan as the population globally is expanding and raising the need to boost food production to meet demand,” Moriyama said in his opening remarks to the seven-member meeting.
“We, as the members of the Group of Seven nations, share common problems and want to discuss them together for a solution,” he said.
Kubota Corp, Japan’s largest maker of agricultural machinery, has already developed its first prototype autonomous tractor for use in rice paddies. Iseki and Co and Yanmar Co are also developing autonomous tractors and harvesters with Hitachi Ltd developing systems for farm machinery.
It is not just vehicles: Kubota is also developing and marketing a suit-like device to help farmers harvest and carry fruit and vegetables.
CHIP WAR: Tariffs on Taiwanese chips would prompt companies to move their factories, but not necessarily to the US, unleashing a ‘global cross-sector tariff war’ US President Donald Trump would “shoot himself in the foot” if he follows through on his recent pledge to impose higher tariffs on Taiwanese and other foreign semiconductors entering the US, analysts said. Trump’s plans to raise tariffs on chips manufactured in Taiwan to as high as 100 percent would backfire, macroeconomist Henry Wu (吳嘉隆) said. He would “shoot himself in the foot,” Wu said on Saturday, as such economic measures would lead Taiwanese chip suppliers to pass on additional costs to their US clients and consumers, and ultimately cause another wave of inflation. Trump has claimed that Taiwan took up to
A start-up in Mexico is trying to help get a handle on one coastal city’s plastic waste problem by converting it into gasoline, diesel and other fuels. With less than 10 percent of the world’s plastics being recycled, Petgas’ idea is that rather than letting discarded plastic become waste, it can become productive again as fuel. Petgas developed a machine in the port city of Boca del Rio that uses pyrolysis, a thermodynamic process that heats plastics in the absence of oxygen, breaking it down to produce gasoline, diesel, kerosene, paraffin and coke. Petgas chief technology officer Carlos Parraguirre Diaz said that in
SUPPORT: The government said it would help firms deal with supply disruptions, after Trump signed orders imposing tariffs of 25 percent on imports from Canada and Mexico The government pledged to help companies with operations in Mexico, such as iPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), shift production lines and investment if needed to deal with higher US tariffs. The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday announced measures to help local firms cope with the US tariff increases on Canada, Mexico, China and other potential areas. The ministry said that it would establish an investment and trade service center in the US to help Taiwanese firms assess the investment environment in different US states, plan supply chain relocation strategies and
Japan intends to closely monitor the impact on its currency of US President Donald Trump’s new tariffs and is worried about the international fallout from the trade imposts, Japanese Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato said. “We need to carefully see how the exchange rate and other factors will be affected and what form US monetary policy will take in the future,” Kato said yesterday in an interview with Fuji Television. Japan is very concerned about how the tariffs might impact the global economy, he added. Kato spoke as nations and firms brace for potential repercussions after Trump unleashed the first salvo of
RSS