Translator: Masako Kigami Reviewer: Claire Ghyselen
We all know that the Japanese society is aging.
But where exactly does it stand in its transition ?
This is a graph from a white book on aging society issued by Cabinet Office.
The Japanese population has peaked in 2015.
As statistics show that the total population would be decreased
due to the declining birth rate year by year.
In 40 years, in 2055, the number of 65 years old or more in Japan
will be increasing to reach 40% of the total population.
In other words, in 40 years, our generation will be the aged one.
Now, do you know how many people are active
in the first industry, agriculture, forestry and fisheries?
The number
will be decreasing in spite of aging year by year.
Currently, the first industry
account for 3.6% of the Japanese economy.
Will it disappear from Japan in the future?
Let's have a look at agricultural production
The upper graph shows the gross agricultural output.
It is decreasing every year,
reflecting to the decline of the number of farmers.
Therefore, the income of production agriculture
is decreasing year by year, too.
The image of agriculture is strongly connected
with hard work and unstable income.
If they are stability-oriented young people,
they won't venture into farming.
There are three consequences to this:
ageing is getting faster, the number of farmers is decreasing fast
and untended arable land is booming.
I think Japan is stuck in a viscous circle.
Do you think future of the first industry in Japan should be miserable?
I don't think so.
Most of our generation was not educated into farming.
But we are used to diligently working from morning to night for companies.
Some of you may long for reconnecting with nature,
because it allows you to work at your own pace.
There are many possibility to increase production and profits
by improving production processes
based on information and communication technologies.
Here is my strategy. Produce local special products in the first sector.
Next, add add high value or branding in second industry.
And then, distribute and sell effectively in third industry.
1 x 2 x 3 = 6
This is the sixth industry:
a complete industrialization of agriculture.
Of course, there are issues related to food safety and risk management.
However, honestly speaking, we should be over pessimistic
when facing with a super-aging society.
By the way, do you know the technology of "plant factory"?
I'm sure some of you know about it.
When searching "plant factory" on Google,
the results are as follows:
There are two kinds of factories.
The first one is based on natural light from the sun.
The second is based on artificial light such as LED and fluorescent bulbs
like LED and fluorescent bulbs.
Today, major electronic makers renovate a cleanroom
into plant factories with LED or fluorescent light.
They produce lettuces and leaf vegetable and sell them.
As I've just mentioned it,
we are moving towards the sixth industry,
the complete industrialization of agriculture,
How about other countries in the world?
This is the concept of the "vertical farm" developed by Dickson Despommier,
emeritus professor of Columbia University.
The meaning is "producing food in vertically stacked layers" in Japanese.
This concept is one of the propositions
to use land effectively in urban regions.
In a building like this one, you feed farm animals, but not only.
You also cultivate plants such as leaf vegetables and fruits.
You can then sell your products
in the supermarket located on the first floor.
This system makes it possible to create a circular agriculture within the building.
If we can create such a system in urban area,
we can reduce transportation cost drastically
as well as create a bright future
thanks to the creation of new jobs and a more balance way of life.
There are various challenging issues,
like making the system economically viable and getting a better energy efficiency.
But when I saw this drawing by designers based on the concept,
It made me dream that someday, I could make it possible.
So I've studied day and night.
Let me share my dream with you.
Do you know the mechanism of plant growth?
It is written on the science textbook for fourth grade children.
Photosynthesis takes place on the surface of leaves
and evaporation from their backside.
That's how plants grow.
Photosynthesis is the process used by plants to convert CO2 in air
and water absorbed from their roots
into organic matter, using sunlight.
Evaporation from the backside of the leaves starts when the sun rises.
Water and nutrients are absorbed by the roots
and are conveyed to their whole organism.
If we can measure their growth,
it should be possible to control their rate of growth, shouldn't it?
How do I approach this simple question?
The growth of plants is connected to photosynthesis and evaporation,
and both processes are located on leaves.
So, if we can count indirectly how many leaves a plant has,
we should be able to measure its growth.
Now, I am sharing the machine I developed.
I've named it a "wireless scattering light censor".
To grow, a plant needs photosynthesis and evaporation.
This process is related with how many leaves a plant has got.
The more leaves a plant has got, the darker its stem is
because leaves grow to catch sunlight.
That was why I developed this wireless machine to measure light amount
between its surface and stem.
We can also measure temperature, humidity and brightness.
I also ponder how to estimate
evaporation and photosynthesis based on lush leaves.
Water and nutrients that plants absorb are important, too.
As for hydroponic culture,
by measuring the amount of water in a tank,
we can deduct the volume absorbed by the plant.
If we do the same for the nutrient, and measure them,
we can deduct how much was absorbed with the water.
We developed various sencors
and established an environment to enable us to measure many temperatures,
humidity, brightness and concentration of nutrient solution.
By combining those data to statistical data prepared in our lab,
we could logically deduct the actual amount of nutrient absorbed by the plants.
We then encoded this huge amount of data into our computer.
Based on current temperature, humidity, water level, concentration and past data,
the computer calculated reasonable nutrient absorption amount.
That is my challenge.
We aim to reproduce the know-how of professional farmers
who are depending on their experience and intuition.
This is the core project.
But I have a concern about the volume of data we enter in a computer.
Should we consider it as empirical value?
The more is it really the better?
We need time and efforts to collect huge amounts of data.
We used three-year worth of open data
from the Automated Meteorological Data Acquisition System
to be learned by our computer.
We compared the errors
between the actual data and our computer's simulation.
Japan stretches from North to South. It is a very long country.
So I picked up weather data for Sapporo, Tokyo, Hamamatsu and Naha.
There are 3 years of data.
We've analyzed how errors evolve.
Interestingly, for Naha
the bigger data is, the smaller errors are.
As for Sapporo, Tokyo and Hamamatsu,
especially Sapporo,
big data is not connected with better results.
We obtain more exact results when we use data for 8 months.
According to this, we made a hypothesis
there is appropriate data volume to enter in a computer.
However, it is impossible to encode each regional data.
and verify the best data volume for each region.
So I came up with a better way:
The computer has extracted various data randomly from big data.
Based on this data, we build various prediction models that our model is using.
Let's imagine what will be the temperature tomorrow morning at 7:30.
Each people will have a different imagination.
For example, it is spring now.
"Morning temperature in spring should be like this."
You estimate the temperature based on the word of spring.
But you can estimate it based on recent morning temperature, too.
"Tomorrow's temperature will be like this from the recent weather trend."
If you are good at statistics,
you will extract similar data from past data and analyzes them.
You may think your estimate will be more accurate using statistics.
Anyway, we shall know the accurate data tomorrow.
After we know the correct answer,
we will know which model was the most accurate.
So, we will continue to make predictions with this model.
If we notice that our current model doesn't make accurate prediction,
we will use another model and see how accurate the prediction is.
This takes place automatically.
I coined this algorithm
as “Sliding Window-based Support Vector Regression (SW-SVR)”.
As you are here, please remember the name,
“Sliding Window-based Support Vector Regression”.
(Laughter)
We work in an agriculture labolatory
to conduct experimentations in Iwata, Shizuoka Pref.
We will collect environmental information,
using this wireless scattering light censor."
And we calculate plants' nitrogen absorption amount
using the SW-SVR during six hours in a computer.
By controlling nitrogen supply based on these calculation results,
we measure out just the right amount of solute.
It is important to get just the right amount
because in case of growing tomatoes, for instance,
they will get bigger by using such a solute.
However, if the growing speed of its fruit is faster than its skin,
the skin will crack.
So we can't sell tomatoes with broken skins.
So too much or too less solute is not good.
It should be appropriate.
This graph is one of the results of last winter's experiments.
A black line shows nitrogen absorption by plants.
The red line shows our algorithm's prediction
of the nutrient absorbtion.
The black and red lines were almost same
on November 26 with our first prediction model.
However, as time passes, the difference between them gets bigger.
So we decided to re-create the model automatically on December 20.
Since then, the black and red lines moved similarly.
We can control them.
Looking at these results,
we see that computers can mimic human's know-how to some extend.
At the beginning, I told you not to pessimistic .
about the super aging society
We will establish networks between these fields in difficulties,
and mimic the know-how.
I think we can create the 6th industry
thanks to information and communication technology.
If we operate non-professional concepts professionally,
I think we can create a bright future together.
I would love to create such a future with you.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)