How is 5G technology being used in agriculture in Japan?

The aging workforce and declining working-age population are having a significant impact on Japan's agricultural sector. According to the 2020 Agricultural and Forestry Census, the number of agricultural workers in Japan decreased by more than 20% from 2015 to 2020. In particular, nearly 70% of those remaining in the agricultural sector are 65 years of age or older.

In an effort to revive the agricultural sector, private companies and local governments are working together to develop technologies that can help ease the pressure on farmers and a shrinking workforce. 5G mobile internet technology is seen as playing a key role in this process.

5G Deployment Status in Japan

Commercial 5G mobile phone services were launched in Japan in March 2020. Since then, the technology has been vigorously promoted by the Japanese government. Major mobile carriers such as NTT Docomo, KDDI, SoftBank, and Rakuten Mobile have launched and provided 5G services to users in many areas across the country.

5G services in Japan focus on providing faster, more reliable data transmission speeds and the ability to connect a wide range of smart devices. Major cities in Japan are the first locations where the government has prioritized the deployment of this new technology.

The network deployment of Japanese mobile carriers initially focused on urban areas and crowded places such as airports, subway stations, etc., aiming to cover 90% of the population by 2025. However, the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications later changed the plan with the goal of covering 95% of the population by March 2024 and covering 99% of the population by 2031.

This shows that the Japanese government is particularly interested in promoting the development of 5G technology. The number of 5G subscribers in Japan increased sharply after commercial deployment, reaching more than 69.8 million subscribers in March 2023.

In addition, the Japanese government has also shown its commitment to the development of 5G and supported Japanese companies to quickly adapt to the new technology. This helps facilitate the expansion and widespread application of 5G in areas such as healthcare, education, industry and agriculture. Over the next five years, Japan's four mobile carriers will spend a total of more than $14 billion to build their 5G networks, including investments in 5G base stations, servers and fiber optic cables.

5G technology is helping farmers monitor crops

The agricultural sector plays a crucial role in producing major exports such as rice, barley and wheat as well as meeting domestic demand in Japan. Smart agricultural technology can help Japan’s agricultural sector continue to grow more efficiently as the workforce changes, said Abe Masakuza, head of technology management and deployment at NTT AgriTechnology.

According to Mr. Abe Masakuza, the approach to smart agricultural technologies is an environmentally friendly solution that reduces travel time and allows experts to support more farmers in a limited period of time, contributing to reducing labor shortages in agriculture and realizing profitable farming.

Smart agriculture was introduced to Japanese agriculture by NTT AgriTechnology in 2020 in a three-year project. Experts from the local government's agricultural research center in Tachikawa City, a suburb of Tokyo (about an hour's drive from Chofu City), supported farmers in Chofu City using 5G technology, enabling farming without on-site assistance. The experts helped farmers grow crops through completely remote guidance.

Also in 2020, the first 5G-controlled robot appeared in Iwamizawa, a city in northern Japan. The robot was created through a collaboration between Hokkaido University, NTT AgriTechnology, and the local government, and demonstrated that 5G technology is capable of reliably transmitting large amounts of information from autonomous tractors to data monitoring locations.

5G-connected robots and autonomous tractors allow farmers to remotely monitor crops across multiple fields from a single location and receive support from agricultural research experts. 5G-connected robots also help farmers spray pesticides, mow lawns remotely, and perform other physically demanding tasks that would otherwise be difficult for an aging workforce.

Mr. Abe Masakuza said that the important thing is that 5G technology allows farmers to transmit 4K quality footage in real time thanks to the high bandwidth it provides, which is difficult to achieve with conventional Wi-Fi networks.

This helps farmers monitor crop diseases and create harvest schedules while navigating conditions that can change on a daily basis. More importantly, the low latency built into 5G technology ensures that experts can operate robots safely.

According to Abe Masakuza, farmers benefit from this system because it allows them to receive support from experts on a daily basis, instead of weekly or even monthly support as before. They no longer have to check their crops daily. Images and data can be collected and analyzed easily.

In some case studies, 5G technology has been deployed. In Chofu City, NTT AgriTechnology has built fully automated greenhouses where farmers use 5G-connected technology such as smart greenhouses to control parameters including temperature and humidity. In this case study, the greenhouses have reduced the burden on farmers and protected crops from harsh weather.

In addition, 5G allowed Chofu City workers who had no agricultural knowledge to receive remote guidance from experts, then successfully deploy tomato cultivation and make the crop a local food source.

The availability of 5G technology also allows experts to guide farmers in real time, with high-quality images. The cultivation of agricultural crops benefits from these innovations, as Japan’s climate is often hot and humid, requiring constant monitoring to grow.

Using a dedicated 5G network to connect to smart agricultural equipment

Japan's 5G network already covers about 55.5% of the population, with a goal of covering 95% of the population by the end of 2023. Most of this coverage is provided by public mobile operators. However, smart farm manufacturers are hoping to increase the development of private 5G networks to reach rural agricultural areas.

Private 5G networks are better for the agricultural sector because they are more customizable to meet the needs of local conditions and can cover rural areas more reliably, said Shahid Ahmed, executive vice president of innovation ventures at NTT AgriTechnology.

“These autonomous tractors have become really advanced and they have to be connected all the time. As we move towards real-time analytics and machine learning, real-time data is a must,” he said.

Strong, consistent connectivity is key for agriculture and other industries with repetitive tasks, says Shahid Ahmed. Low latency in 5G technology helps robots process field information in a timely and accurate manner.

“If you want to adjust the fertilizer composition inside your tractor, you can’t wait even a few seconds,” Shahid Ahmed said. “Within a second, you have to adapt because as you move on the ground, the soil will have different characteristics. You want to adjust immediately.”

According to Shahid Ahmed, 5G technology is the right tool for the job because of its greater bandwidth and lower latency compared to previous generations of mobile Internet.

Shahid Ahmed and Abe Masakuza both say the next steps for 5G farming involve scaling up these projects so farmers can monitor more fields at once. To do that, companies and local governments will need to continue investing in private 5G networks.

Deploying drones to spray pesticides and applying technology in harvesting can also reduce the need for labor and the burden on workers. They hope that artificial intelligence (AI) technology will soon be able to make recommendations based on the data that has been collected.

Affirming the importance of 5G technology in smart agriculture, Shahid Ahmed said that we really cannot take advantage of advanced software systems like machine learning and AI without real-time data being fed in. A mobile information network with high speed and low latency like 5G is essential.