Fujitsu : and Aeon Launch ICT-based Agricultural Field Trial in Vietnam's Hà Nam Province

Fujitsu Limited, Fujitsu Vietnam Ltd. (collectively 'Fujitsu'), and Aeon Agri Create Co., Ltd. today announced an information and communication technology-driven agricultural field trial in Hà Nam Province in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The field trial, commenced in October 2015 with the support of the JICA Viet Nam Office of the Japan International Cooperation Agency, seeks to assess the effectiveness of Japanese agricultural techniques that have been transplanted to Vietnam, specifically the use of ICT to consolidate and utilize data from farm-work records, growing conditions, and the cultivation environment.

In addition, as of January 19, 2016, the companies have started a Hanoi field trial in which researchers from the Vietnam Women's Union will collate market price data on certain farm products using a smartphone app.

These projects build on the experience and expertise Fujitsu gained through a study on the effectiveness of a participatory disaster prevention system with resident representatives in Thừa Thiên Huế Province, a one-year project started from January 2015 with the support of the JICA Viet Nam Office.

Fujitsu will now collect such data as farm-work records and market prices reported using smartphones, which are easy to deploy in Vietnam. This data will be aggregated and put into visual format at a Fujitsu datacenter before being presented. Aeon Agri Create will then provide agricultural guidance based on the collected data.

The field trials will enable the partners to analyze the technologies and methods that are effective for Vietnam's agricultural sector, and, with the JICA Viet Nam Office, will contribute to creating a food value chain in Vietnam that achieves higher productivity and a stable supply of safe agricultural products.

Background

In Vietnam, as a solution to improving people's livelihoods and expanding the agricultural sector into food processing and services, there is an urgent need to build a food value chain that improves the safety and productivity of farm products. To promote the development and dynamism of Vietnam's agricultural sector, the JICA Viet Nam Office launched these projects to examine the use ICT currently practiced by Japan's agricultural sector.

Overview of the Field Trials

1. Trial Period

October 2015 - March 2016

2. Locations

Agricultural field trial: Approximately 1,000 square meters of farmland supplied by the city of Phủ Lý in Hà Nam Province for the purposes of this trial

Market price data survey: Hanoi

3. Objectives

1) Understand issues associated with collecting data on farm-work records, growing conditions, and cultivation environment.
2) Investigate the effectiveness of using the collected data.
3) Explore the potential of training people able to implement Japanese agricultural techniques in Vietnam.
4) Survey the feasibility and effectiveness of collecting market price data from stores and markets.

4. Partner Organizations

1) Fujitsu Limited and Fujitsu Vietnam Ltd. (collectively 'Fujitsu')
Working together with Fujitsu Mission Critical Systems Limited, Fujitsu will advance the overall projects, provide the ICT environment, including smartphone applications to collect, analyze, and use information on farm-work records, growing conditions, and the cultivation environment, and evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of these approaches.
a. 18 smartphones
b. Smartphone application to collect farm-work data
c. Smartphone application to collect market price data
d. RFID tags for recording farm-work logs
e. Data aggregation platform for collecting and storing data (cloud server in a Fujitsu datacenter)
f. Network environment
g. Website for obtaining and displaying collected data
h. Weather sensors and soil sensors in the farm fields

2) Aeon Agri Create
Aeon Agri Create will provide guidance on Japanese agricultural techniques with the aim of cultivating high-quality, safe and secure farm products. Aeon Agri Create will also give a series of lectures in Hà Nam Province on such topics as fertilization methods and GLOBALG.A.P.. While sharing with local farmworkers information on farm-work records, growing conditions, and the cultivation environment over the Internet, it will also provide remote guidance for farm tasks from Japan via phone and email.

5. Implementation Overview

1) Data collection using ICT

1. Farm-work records:
Using a smartphone application for collecting farm-work data, each farmworker will, by reading information from RFID tags placed in the farm fields, use the Internet to send to Fujitsu's data collection and storage platform information on what work was done, by whom, when, where, and for how long. From the tags for each farmworker, the tags for each farm-field lot, and the tags for each task, such as seed planting, watering, and fertilization, information on the work performed can be sent just by having each worker wave a smartphone over the worker's own tag, the field-lot tag, and the tag attached to the label of the work actually being performed.

2. Growing conditions:
Using the smartphone application for collecting farm-work data, the farmworkers will use photographs and memos sent to Fujitsu's data collection and storage platform to convey information on growing conditions, such as plant height, number of leaves, and number of fruits, and the emergence of any damage or disease caused by pests.

3. Weather data:
Using sensors placed in the greenhouses and fields of this project's farm, temperature, humidity, levels of rainfall, and levels of sunlight are measured every hour or every ten minutes, and stored in Fujitsu's data collection and storage platform.

4. Soil data:
Using soil sensors placed in this project's fields, data on such factors as soil moisture levels, soil temperature, and electrolytes are measured three times a day and stored in Fujitsu's data collection and storage platform.

5. Market-price data:
Thirteen members of the Vietnam Women's Union will participate in this project as investigators. Each investigator will take responsibility for one store or market in the city, investigate such information as the price of vegetables, where they were grown, and their condition (by taking photographs), and send this data using their smartphone application for collecting market data. Via the Internet, this data is then stored in Fujitsu's data collection and storage platform.

2) Use of data in the agricultural field trial
The data stored in Fujitsu's data collection and storage platform will be sorted, such as by each farm product and field, aggregated, and displayed in graph form to make it easy to grasp changes and trends. The workers participating in this project in Hà Nam Province, as well as Fujitsu, Aeon Agri Create, and the JICA Viet Nam Office, can use the Internet to acquire information on the status of farm work and the growing conditions of farm products in near real time.

Using the Internet from their offices in Japan to grasp the status of work and farm product growing conditions, representatives from Aeon Agri Create will use this information to provide instructions and recommendations to the farmworkers in Vietnam. Because information can be shared on a timely basis between experts at Aeon Agri Create and the farmworkers, as well as among the farmworkers, it is possible to respond quickly to changes in the environment or the conditions of the farm products.

Main data display functions:

• Farm-work data log function (smartphone application)
• Farm-work record overview display function (web)
• Detailed image display function (web)
• Graphing functions (web)

3) Use of data in the market price data survey
Data sent by the Vietnam Women's Union investigators, such as prices and photographs of farm products at each store, will be aggregated on Fujitsu's data collection and storage platform, and then mapped onto a map of the city of Hanoi. Using the smartphone application for collecting market price data, the JICA Viet Nam Office, Fujitsu, and the Vietnam Women's Union investigators can access this market price data.

Main functions:

• Market price data log function (smartphone application)
• Market price data browsing function (smartphone application)

4) Evaluation of pilot projects
Fujitsu and Aeon Agri Create will prepare a report on the effectiveness and impact of the field trials, including the deployment of ICT in Vietnam's agricultural sector, guidance on Japanese agricultural techniques, and the market price data survey. They plan to present this report to the JICA Viet Nam Office in March 2016.

Fujitsu Ltd. issued this content on 2016-01-19 and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed by Public, unedited and unaltered, on 2016-01-19 07:57:11 UTC

Original Document: http://www.fujitsu.com/global/about/resources/news/press-releases/2016/0119-03.html