Reducing Environmental Impact

As the severe impact of climate change spreads worldwide, reducing greenhouse gases (GHG) has become a common challenge across multiple industries. The agricultural sector is no exception, and as steps are taken toward sustainability, the sector faces an urgent need to reduce its GHG emissions and lessen its burden on the environment.

Kubota is working toward initiatives aimed at reducing the environmental impact of agriculture, with the goal of achieving a society that can control GHG emissions and respond to climate change. One of these is carbon neutral farming. Through an approach that includes technologies to curb GHG emissions generated from soil and decarbonization of power sources for agricultural and construction machinery, Kubota is contributing to carbon neutrality in agriculture.

The other initiative is resource circulation in farming. Kubota is helping to achieve this through its resource circulation solutions, which generate energy from agricultural byproducts such as rice straw that went unused in the past, reuse it agricultural machinery and equipment, and recover fertilizer from sewage sludge.

In order to reduce the environmental impact of agricultural and construction machinery, Kubota is putting its energies into the adoption of next-generation power sources that are not reliant on diesel engines.

Some examples are full-scale development of battery-powered electric vehicles (EVs) that can comply with stricter regulations as Europe and other regions accelerate their shift away from diesel. Kubota is also promoting sales and research for biodiesel agricultural machinery, especially for Southeast Asia. And development is under way for hydrogen-powered engines and tractors that run on hydrogen fuel cells (FC).

Along with next-generation power for agricultural and construction machinery, Kubota is working to reduce GHG emissions at production centers by switching to fuels with lower CO₂ emissions and increasing use of renewable energy.

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  FC tractors powered by hydrogen fuel cells have already moved into the proof-of-concept phase.

Kubota is promoting smart agriculture, which makes full use of the latest technologies including robotics, AI, and IoT to automate agricultural work and utilize data in farming. This reduces unnecessary work, saving energy and conserving resources while achieving high-quality production.

For example, automated-driving agricultural machinery uses positioning information from the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) to set the optimum route for field work and complete the work with the shortest and most efficient route. This leads to fuel savings as well as reductions in redundant tasks and other unnecessary work.

And by keeping records of crop quality, soil conditions, and work performance using machinery that supports smart agriculture, this information can be used by a precision farming system (Farm Management Information System, FMIS), allowing farmers to plan fertilizer and pesticide needed for each zone in the field when planting the following year’s crops. Determining appropriate amounts of fertilizers and pesticides prevents excessive use that leads to environmental pollution.

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  A map shows the amounts of chemical fertilizer and pesticides needed for areas of a field. Agricultural machinery conducts variable fertilization in accordance with this map.

GHGs generated from soil are one of the factors that increase environmental burden from farming. Methane emissions from rice paddies are an especially pressing issue. Methane is a GHG that causes roughly 25 times the greenhouse effects of CO₂, and about 40% of methane emissions in Japan come from rice paddies.

Kubota has verified that utilizing the rice paddy water management system that it has developed and extending the mid-season drainage^*1 period during rice cultivation by about one week can reduce methane emissions by an average of 30% without affecting crop yield or quality.

Plus, with direct seeding^*2 techniques, rice straw ploughing^*3, and no-till cultivation^*4, Kubota is contributing to lower GHG emissions from soil.

1. *1.The wet-rice farming practice of draining the paddy field of water and drying out the soil in order to adjust the growth of rice plants by preventing root rot and controlling excessive tillering.
2. *2.The process of sowing seeds directly into paddy fields, as opposed to transplanting seedlings. This makes the tasks of raising and transplanting seedlings more efficient and reduces fuel consumption by rice transplanters.
3. *3.The process of laying rice straw on farmland, tilling it, and incorporating it into the soil. Ploughing the straw in the autumn and promoting composting will reduce organic matter volume decomposed during the following year’s rice cultivation period, thereby reducing methane emissions.
4. *4.The process of sowing seeds and growing crops without tilling the field. This reduces the number of times farmland is plowed, cutting GHG emissions from soil.

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  Kubota developed this water management system that also helps to reduce methane emissions from rice paddies.

On top of this, Kubota is taking measures to reduce the environmental effects of greenhouse cultivation. About 35% of GHG emissions from Japan’s agriculture, forestry, and fisheries sectors derive from fuel combustion. Kubota is promoting the adoption of hybrid-system facilities and equipment such as heat pump air conditioners that can reduce fuel consumption, leading to lower GHG emissions.

The agricultural production process generates residues such as rice and wheat straw, rice husks, stems, leaves, and roots. Some of these are reused as compost, and the rest are disposed of as waste. Reducing this waste and reusing it in the form of resources are essential for achieving carbon neutrality in farming.

Kubota is now conducting studies into a system that generates methane and hydrogen from agricultural byproducts and reuses them as energy for battery-powered (EV) and fuel cell (FCV) agricultural machinery. The company is also promoting development of a gasification and biochar-generating system that is expected to generate carbon credits through the generation of biochar^*5.

1. *5.Carbon-rich material derived from organic waste. It is used to improve soil quality, absorb CO₂, and make soil more permeable.

Agriculture-related solutions are not the only way to reduce the environmental impact of farming. Kubota is also leveraging the technologies and solutions it has developed in the areas of water and the environment to provide resource circulation in agriculture.

For example, using Kubota’s Resource Circulation Solution technologies that address waste disposal challenges, researchers are aiming for the collection of phosphorus from sewage sludge and its reuse as fertilizer. The company is also applying the wastewater treatment plant (johkasou) and sewage treatment technology used by its water and environmental business to the agricultural field, linking it to the regeneration of water and other resources.

Beginning with water resource regeneration that applies wastewater treatment plant (johkasou) and sewage treatment technologies, Kubota is using its Resource Circulation Solution technologies for waste disposal in the development of a system that recovers phosphorus from sewage sludge and reuses it as fertilizer.