Kubota Corporation (Headquarters: Naniwa-ku, Osaka, Japan; President and Representative Director: Masatoshi Kimata; hereinafter “Kubota”) today announced that it has invested in Advanced Farm Technologies, Inc. (hereinafter “advanced.farm”), a U.S.-based start-up offering robotics-based automation solutions in the agriculture field.
Through this investment in advanced.farm, Kubota intends to assist farming businesses in the U.S. and other regions in saving labor and increasing work efficiency.

1. Background and aims

• In order to accelerate the ongoing initiative to offer new value to our customers by way of open innovation through collaboration with external partners, Kubota established its Innovation Center this June.
• As part of this initiative, Kubota has focused on “harvesting services,” which are in high demand among farmers of fruits and vegetables, and decided to invest in advanced.farm, which offers cutting-edge automation solutions in this field and is working on a robotic strawberry harvester for commercial purposes.
• With this investment decision, Kubota will strengthen its technological development for labor saving and automation of harvesting operations of strawberries and other fruits and vegetables, while at the same time propelling the solution business utilizing these technologies, thereby contributing to labor-saving, efficient farm operations in the U.S. and other regions.

2. About “advanced.farm”

Name	Advanced Farm Technologies, Inc.
Establishment	2018
Location	California, the U.S.
Line of business	Development of automated strawberry harvesting robots, contract harvesting services

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