"Automatic vegetable factory" in which the world's first robot performs agriculture from Japan was born

As an approach to compensate for agricultural labor shortage in Japan of an aging society, a factory that plants vegetables by farming is planned to appear in Kyoto, where a robot (= a machine that works fully automatically) replaces humans.

Japanese firm to open world's first robot-run farm | Environment | The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/01/japanese-firm-to-open-worlds-first-robot-run-farm

About automated vegetable factory
http://spread.co.jp/vegetable-factory/

The "robot vegetable factory" starts spreading in Kyoto prefecture, which is a spread company that operates a plant factory, as a vegetable factory that provides packed high-quality lettuce, GIGAZINE also covers the Kameoka plant as follows I will.

Vegetus 'Vegetable Factory' We saw the next generation style of stable supply of vegetables at Kameoka Plant - GIGAZINE


Such spread Inc. plans to start an automatic vegetable factory "Keihanna plant" using robot at Keihanna Gakken city (Kansai gakuin science city) in Kyoto prefecture in mid 2017 and transplants seedlings by introducing robot It will be able to fully automate work such as raising seedlings, transplanting, growing and harvesting. When the operation of the automatic vegetable factory begins, about 30,000 lettuce can be produced per day, and it is planned to increase the number of production to 500,000 per day within 5 years.

According to JJ Price, the manager of the global marketing department of Spread, he says, "Although seed implantation needs to be done by human beings, nearly all other processes will be done fully automatically" It is. With the start of the factory, the labor cost is halved compared to the existing Kameoka plant, the energy cost can be reduced to one third by LED light, and 98% of the water used to raise agricultural produce is reused It is said that.

In starting the automatic vegetable factory, the spread said, "Our automatic vegetable factory will show a new model of agriculture, but our aim is not to replace human farmers but human and machine I want to raise awareness of agriculture among young people, especially by developing a new system that can work together. "