Plant Factory in Japan

Japan's smart agriculture, with information technology as its characteristic, realizes the farming restructuring and upgrading, helping to avert worker shortages.

Japan attaches great importance to personnel training, and has successfully upgraded its agricultural industry with the help of agricultural information network, agricultural database system, precision agriculture, biological information and electronic commerce. He said that learning from Japan's experience in the development of intelligent agriculture can help China's smart agriculture faster and more stable development.

The Plant Can be Planted Through Computer During The Day, Robot On Duty At Night

Fujitsu's "autumn color" smart farm, located in Putian city, it covers 85,000m², the size as big as 12 football fields. There are many more than 6-meter-tall greenhouse, which are made of glass in exterior structure, less steel-frame construction in the top to guarantee the more sunshine area.

They will wear plastic jackets, rubber gloves and disinfect their soles and hands before entering one of the shelters where they grow bell peppers. It is strictly forbidden to touch the plants by hand to ensure that the environment is as sterile as possible.

The plants are cultivated in a specially cultivated soil, where water, nutrients and carbon dioxide are piped into the bottom. The branches of the bell pepper grow continuously along the suspended steel wire, and the staff need a special rickshaw to enter the rows of plants for picking.The supply of moisture and nutrients in the shed is controlled by computers.

Yitengshengmin, a specialist at the autumn color farm, said that the autumn color farm was run by Fujitsu, a leading company, and an agricultural finance company, as well as a local seed research and development enterprise in Putian, which was joint Venture establish together in 2016. At present, the farm has achieved a high degree of automation and operation management visualization in environmental control. In the main building, the staff can observe the temperature, humidity and daylight intensity of the greenhouse shed in real time through multiple display screens and implement remote operation and cloud database. In Japan, there are many typhoons, and when it is coming, the staff can control the skylights of the shed by remote control.

At night, there are self-service robots walk along the track, monitoring the plants with led lights and other equipment, and forming a color image of photo fusion for staff to adjust temperature and humidity, Yitengshengmin introduced.

Led Grow Light

"Plant Factory" Has Become A Hot Investment

"The plant factory" using computer automatic to control the temperature, humidity, light, carbon dioxide concentration, nutrient solution condition and so on. The "plant factory" utilized a computer that automatically controls the environmental conditions such as temperature, humidity, light, carbon dioxide concentration and nutrient solution of plants, and realizes mass production of plants in a short period of time and in a small space to realize crops. Efficient agricultural systems for continuous production. The concept of “plant factory” appeared in Northern Europe at first, but it was first applied in Japan on a large scale. There are currently more than 400 artificial plant factories in the world, half of which are in Japan.

The 74-year-old director of the Japan Plant Factory Research Association, said that in the plant factory in Chiba Prefecture, which is closed in a two-story building surrounded by greenhouses in the National Chiba University campus. The greenhouse environment is enclosed environment, the staff monitored the growth of vegetables through a unique “growth management system” in Chiba Prefecture. It takes about 20 days to grow vegetables from the seeds to the seedlings, and on this basis, you can harvest in more than 10 days.

A plant factory greenhouse that requires 10 people to manage, can harvest 1 million vegetables a year, and sale 100 million yen (about 5.87 million yuan). The plant factory also has a visitor room with a number of small plant factories for home and university teaching, the size as big as a refrigerator freezer, and through the App to connect with others people

In recent years, plant factories have become a hot target for global agricultural investment. One of the reasons for the increase in investment was the large scale use of led lamps in plant factory. In the past, the cost of plant factory, about 25% of electricity, led lamps used to bring electricity prices down sharply, thereby reducing the cost of investment. It is understood that arclants mainly produce various kinds of vegetables, while researchers are concerned about medicinal materials with higher added value, such as angelica. There are also plants in China that focus on the production of raw materials for cosmetics.

A Good Symbol From Japan's Agriculture

At the beginning of 2017, there were reports that some large enterprises such as Japan's plant factories had failed to manage, and that 70 percent of their profits were difficult to make. Before this, Many Japanese farmers have started plant factories to get up to 70% subsidies from the government. However, due to the lack of relevant technology, these factories have closed down after using government subsidies. Some comment said that it is a negative example of China's agricultural development " he said.

But he thinks it is not surprising that 70% of factory plants are losing money. “The media should not over-represent the negative effects of new things. 50 years ago, no one agreed to grow vegetables in the greenhouse. Now 80% of tomatoes and 90% of strawberries in Japan are grown in greenhouses.”

In addition, the lack of funds is also a major bottleneck restricting the development of Japanese agriculture. According to Toshiki, the development of plant factories in Japan and South Korea is at a dangerous state because of insufficient investment. Sun Zhengyi, the richest man in Japan and CEO of Softbank Group of Japan, has invested in an American plant factory. The Chinese LED company Sanan Group and the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have cooperated in Fujian to build the world's largest plant factory , which also made Gu impression in the fengshu.

Although Japanese farmers have the patience of "embroidery", the phenomenon of "acts alone" has a long existed in Japanese agricultural enterprises, which is also a factor restricting the growth of their agriculture. Yitengshengmin, when introducing the original intention of autumn color farm, said that in the past Japan's agricultural "unilateral directivity ", "only as researching, production, or circulation unilateral. Take Japan's agricultural breeding model as an example, Saito shengmin told us, In Japan, there are only two large nursery companies in the country, and the quality of seeds cultivated in many small nursery workshops is not poor, but the added value is lower because of the lack of access to the lower reaches.

Japanese Profit Model

In China, at least 85% of the agricultural sector can not achieve second profits.For example, farmers grow 100 acres of wheat, and the core income comes from selling the wheat.If there is a overstocked commodity, you have to lose money.But in this respect, Japan's experience is worth learning, and other example is Japan, which has found a new profit model for ordinary rice. Japan's rice field painting is a direction worth learning.

The tiansheguan village is the originator of Japanese rice paddies. Inspired by the crop circle, in order to revitalize the local economy and develop tourism resources, the villagers began to make rice paddy art in 1993.

There are different themes about rice paddy art, related to various aspects of Japan culture every year. The number of visitors has exceeded 200,000 per year by travelled Tiansheguan Village. There are also some companies want to use the rice paddy art to make "promotional advertisements" for them. Paddy field art in rice fields attracts a large number of tourists, after the harvest of rice in harvest season, the rice straw was turned into a work of art, which also realized the value of rice fields. Japan's rice paddy art not only have activated the farming industry, income from agricultural products sales except the crop, but also can develop creative agriculture to increase income.