Tokyo, Japan, March 31, 2020: NEC Corporation today announced the
conclusion of a strategic partnership agreement with Kagome Co., Ltd.
to launch agricultural management support services utilising
artificial intelligence (AI) for leading tomato processing companies.
A press release said the new service capitalises on NEC’s AI-enabled agricultural ICT platform, CropScope, to visualise tomato growth and soil conditions based on sensor data and satellite images, and to provide farming management recommendation services. This AI expertise enables the service to provide information on the best timing and optimal amounts
of irrigation and fertilizer for the cultivation of healthy crops. As a result, farms are able to achieve stable yields and lower cultivation costs, while practicing environmentally sustainable agriculture without depending exclusively on the technical skill of individual growers.
By using this service, said NEC, leading tomato processing companies can now get a comprehensive understanding of the most effective growing
conditions for tomato production on their own farms, as well as their
contract growers. Also, they can manage crop harvest orders across
all fields in an optimal way based on objective data, which helps to
reduce yield loss and improve productivity.
NEC and Kagome began collaborating in the agricultural field in 2015,
and by 2019 they had conducted demonstrations in a variety of regions,
including Portugal, Australia and the United States. An AI farming
experiment in Portugal in 2019 showed that the amount of fertilizer
used for the trial was approximately 20 percent less than the average
amount used in general, yielding 127 tons of tomatoes per hectare,
which is approximately 1.3 times that of the average Portuguese
grower, and almost the same as that of particularly skilled growers.
With the goal of commercializing this service, Kagome will establish
a Smart Agri Division in April 2020, first targeting customers in
Europe, then aiming to expand the business to worldwide markets. As a
promising market of the future, trial services of tomato production
in Japan are scheduled to take place in 2020.