According to the World Meteorological Organization, the ten years between 2001 and 2010 were the hottest on record.^*1 At the same time, successive abnormal weather patterns affected regions across the world. In Japan, too, the average temperature rose each year, and the number of extremely hot days in summer increased. Further, torrential rain of the sort that only occurs once every few decades began affecting the whole of Japan every year, while the scale of typhoons increased, leading to large-scale disasters. With these weather patterns having hugely adverse impacts on agriculture, the nation rushed to find suitable countermeasures. Due to its very nature, agriculture is directly affected by the weather. As a result, both inexperienced and veteran farmers were in search of agricultural methods that could tolerate these abnormal weather patterns. Further, with an aging population contributing to increasingly evident gaps between small- and large-scale farms, both ends of the spectrum required measures to increase profitability, reduce labor, reduce costs, and lessen the physical burden on farmers. Issues that couldn’t be solved by advancements in machinery alone confronted Japanese agriculture head on.

Kubota had worked to find solutions to these issues since the mid-1990s, but reinforced efforts to do so in the 2000s. Specifically, the company set out to nurture personnel with specialized expertise in agricultural machinery, crop cultivation, and farm management. For example, by offering the latest information on farm management and proposing ideas for weather-resistant rice cultivation, Kubota provided continuous management support to aging owners of small-scale farm. To business farmers,^*2 alongside measures to improve productivity, cut costs, and enhance profitability, Kubota proposed the optimal agricultural machinery. In this way, the company offered solutions to owners of both small- and large-scale farms.

Kubota was also examining cultivation technologies that would contribute to enhanced productivity and profitability while lessening the physical burden on farmers. One example was the direct sowing of iron-coated rice seeds, also known as the Tetsuko method. This idea was based on proposals from farmers in Niigata, one of Japan’s largest rice-producing regions, and Kubota immediately set about beginning joint development with those farmers, local governments, and other related groups. After repeated trial and error, the Tetsuko method was born. The method was simple—directly sowing rice across rice paddies—and there was no need to raise, transport, or transplant the seedlings, which served to drastically reduce costs and the work involved. This solution benefited farms of all sizes. And so, alongside its hardware, Kubota began to incorporate a diverse range of farm management technologies to propose the optimal solutions to farmers’ concerns. In doing so, the company is supporting farms of various sizes and maintaining the sustainability of Japanese agriculture.