DE S T INAT IONS
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT PAGE:
Shimanami Kaido, a dedicated bicycle road connecting Hiroshima with Shikoku island; oysters in Etajima; lemon trees and sensors
DIGITAL WORKFORCE Hiroshima, like much of Japan, is facing the problem of an ageing, and therefore dwindling, workforce. According to Uemaru, the city has a real people shortage. There are “essentially two jobs for every one job seeker”, he says. Meanwhile, the number of people over the age of 65
who are employed went up 3.5 per cent between 2012 and 2017, fi gures from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications’ Labour Force Survey show. Lemons and oysters are two famous Hiroshima foodstuffs, and farmers and fishery workers who produce these are particularly hard hit by this demographic issue. Sixty-eight-year-old Kazuyuki Sueoka has been working
at his family’s Shinkaen Farm outside of Hiroshima City for the past 16 years, having done his time as a “salaryman” – a term for the besuited and overworked Japanese urban white-collar worker – before becoming the sixth generation to run his family’s 1.5-hectare lemon farm. He notes that the country’s ageing population is a major issue for growers in the region, with fewer young people interested in taking over this kind of business. While Sueoka does have the seventh generation of the
farm’s owners already lined up – his daughter’s husband will take over the farm after him – he doesn’t employ any of his own workers to assist him on the farm. The only help he receives is from two people employed by the Tobishima Citrus Club, a consortium of five businesses
and associations that was among the nine successful applicants of the government’s Sandbox programme. The consortium’s goal has been to digitise much of
the lemon-growing process through the use of Internet of Things (IoT) technology, a concept that involves various devices remotely communicating with each other and sharing data. In July 2018, the group began placing low-powered wide-area (LPWA) sensors in the earth to track growing conditions at farms on the island of Osaki Shimojima to the southwest of Hiroshima City. T e hope is that gathered data can eventually be shared among other lemon farmers, including newcomers, in order to help stabilise yields, which have fluctuated significantly over the past few years. Along with the IoT, the consortium also plans to use
drone and satellite technology to better understand the local and regional environment. It is even thinking of introducing automated robots to help with manual labour, which typically includes farmers having to carry up to 20kg of lemons across hilly terrain.
bus ine s s tr a v el ler .c om AP RIL 20 19 21
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68
