Japan turns to drones to replace its ageing farmers
- As farming communities grow older and young people abandon agriculture, Tokyo hopes a new generation of drones will be able to spray its crops, sow its fields and pollinate its crops
Japan’s agriculture sector is turning to drone technology as farming communities age and more young people opt for office careers.
The agriculture ministry plans to use drones to bring farming into the 21st century and make life easier for the shrinking number of people who work the land. Recent leaps in drone technology mean many tasks can now be carried out by remotely operated aircraft.
“Drones are easy to handle and can operate at many different types of site, such as in hilly areas and mountains,” a ministry official said.
So much agricultural land across Japan is just being abandoned because there is no one left in these communities to farm it
The ministry is to conduct a series of field tests, in which drones will be used to spray crops with pesticides and fertilisers, sow fields, artificially pollinate fruit crops, transport agricultural equipment and conduct airborne surveys of fields hit by drought or disease.
Kevin Short, a professor at Tokyo University of Information Sciences who has been involved in government programmes to increase the use of technology in agriculture, said the ageing of the farming labour force had been “a plague on the sector for some years now”.
“Young people don’t want to work in jobs that are seen as being dirty, dull and not very well paid, while young women really have no desire to marry into a farming family when they can have the bright lights of the city.
“Inevitably, the number of farmers is falling steeply and they need all the help they can get,” Short said. “Some farmers have been using radio-controlled helicopters for some of the tasks they need, but drones are far more manoeuvrable and – even at the higher end of the market – relatively cheap to buy.”