※This is a machine-translated text of the original article.

NTT East Corporation, NTT AgriTechnology Corporation​, and National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO) announced that they had concluded a collaborative agreement to cooperate in promoting regional implementation of data-driven agriculture to improve agricultural productivity and producer incomes.

Recently, the decline of agricultural workers due to the declining birthrate and aging population has become a challenge in Japan, but interest in smart agriculture, which realizes labor saving and productivity improvement, has been increasing.

Governments are also advocating a “data-driven society” that uses AI and IoT to realize “Society5. 0” that achieves both economic development and the solution of social issues.

In order to “practice agriculture using data”, a mechanism that leads to the interests of producers and local communities is required.
In order to meet the expectations of producers and local governments, the three companies agreed to combine their strengths to promote local implementation of data-driven agriculture.

The three companies intend to digitize the agricultural product cultivation manual held by NARO, store it in the cloud, and realize a mechanism to automatically link it with environmental data acquired by the IoT sensing equipment in the field.

This makes it possible to effectively obtain information and cultivation methods capable of managing the optimum field environment even for producers who have little cultivation experience.

The company says it can support the stable production of newly entering producers and producers who are newly taking on the challenge of cultivating high-value-added varieties.

In addition, by reflecting the environmental data accumulated by the IoT sensing equipment installed in the farm field in the digitized cultivation manual, the brush-up is attempted, which also leads to the improvement of the brand and added value of the entire production region.
As a future development, the three companies intend to expand their efforts based on the needs and demands of producers and local communities.

Original Text: https://ampmedia.jp/2020/02/19/ntt-9/