Farm full of robots

On a special Japanese farm, robots will do everything and even their exhaust is utilized to speed up the trees faster.

Nikkei newspaper reported that the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture will set up a farm in which machines will carry out every step of the cultivation process. The farm will grow in an area of ​​250 hectares of land that had been devastated by tsunamis in March last year in Miyagi Prefecture. There, the automatic plows will make the soil porous, and the LEDs replace pesticides to protect rice, vegetables and fruits from the attack of harmful insects. The robots will harvest farm produce and put them in the box.

Carbon dioxide gas generated by the machines will be recovered to serve plants on the field to boost their growth rate and reduce the level of dependence on chemical fertilizers.

A Ministry of Agriculture official confirmed a special farm - called 'Dream Project' - will be tested this year and the government will spend $ 52 million for it within the next 6 years.

Fruit harvesting robot. (Photo: emeraldinsight.com)

Japan's Ministry of Agriculture will invite a number of high-tech companies - Panasonic, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Sharp - to join the project. The total investment for the project - from both government and private - can be up to 10 billion yen (130 million USD).

"We hope the project will not only support farmers in areas that have suffered from disasters, but also revitalize the country's agriculture ," said a spokesman for the Ministry of Agriculture.

Farming on the experimental farm will begin after the machines remove all salt in the soil. Agricultural companies in Miyagi Prefecture will be hired to manage the farm. After the six-year trial ended, the government will call local farmers to contribute land to agricultural companies to cultivate.

The tsunami in March last year engulfed a large area near the northeast coast of Japan. It seriously pollutes the soil, leaving salt and oil on many fields. The latest Japanese government statistics show that about 24,000 hectares of fertile agricultural land has been destroyed by tsunamis, earthquakes and radioactive dust from the Fukushima I. nuclear power plant.