By RASHVINJEET S.BEDI
rashvin@thestar.com.my
NIIGATA Prefecture in Japan is renowned as the country's rice capital. Some locals claim that the best rice and sake (rice wine) come from this region located about 250km from Tokyo.
To maintain the quality of the product, The Japan Agricultural Cooperative Echigo Santo in Niigata works hard to grow high value-added rice.
A lot of work goes into determining the best protein content of the rice as well as the ideal time for harvesting.
Once upon a time, the cooperative staff had to visually inspect the vast rice fields. Needless to say, this involved a lot of energy, time and resources.
Now that a satellite imaging and analysis system has been introduced, the cooperative staff no longer have to make painstaking visits to the rice fields.
They can now prepare, in the comfort of their office, “harvest maps” or “rice protein content maps” that predict the appropriate harvesting period.
As travelling to the rice fields is not necessary anymore, carbon dioxide (CO2) emission has been reduced by about 98%.
The system is one of Fujitsu's Green Policy Solutions, which makes use of ICT to reduce the load on the environment.
According to Atsuhisa Takahashi, Fujitsu Corporate Executive Advisor (Environmental Strategy), ICT is broadly and deeply penetrating every field and every corner of society.
“As we anticipated long ago, the effects include improved efficiency and quality and lower costs. ICT is also helping lower environmental load,” he says.
Until recently, he adds, ICT has been used mainly in the logistics, manufacturing, and financial fields.
“The Fujitsu Group wants to apply ICT to also help stimulate agriculture, forestry, and other primary industries directly linked to food and people's lives,” he says.
Fujitsu Group uses a diagnosis and evaluation tool called ECOCALC to quantitatively evaluate environmental load reduction effects.
The tool calculates costs and CO2 emissions based on a variety of factors including consumption of goods, transportation, office space, warehouse space, power consumption of ICT and quantity of data communications, Takahashi explains.
“We propose ways for our customers to use ICT to lower their environmental load,” he says, adding that solutions were tailor-made for the circumstance.
Other Fujitsu Green Policy Solutions include farmland management systems, production planning systems, distribution centre systems and electronic medical chart systems.
Takahashi says the last was introduced at the Anjo Kosei Hospital in Aichi Prefecture.
After the introduction of an electronic chart system and medical treatment imaging system, the hospital discarded about 300,000 X-ray films and reduced its film storage space from 200m2 to about 15m2.
While the quantity of film and warehouse space is reduced, electric power consumption by the ICT systems, however, will increase, he points out.
But after taking all the variables into account, CO2 emissions dropped by 21%.
ICT is also used in the forestry business, says Takahashi, citing the town of Nakatosa-cho in Aichi Prefecture, which is 84% forested and has an artificial mixed forest of cedar and cypress trees.
Takahashi says the town has undertaken an aggressive CO2 offset programme to maintain the soundness of this forest and to stimulate forestry.
To calculate the quantity of CO2 the trees absorb, a detailed vegetation distribution map of this forest must be prepared. A physical fact-finding survey would be costly, time-consuming and even dangerous.
However, using an image analysis technology employing high pass spectrum cameras, no personnel is needed to identify the types of trees.
Takahashi says the system can differentiate between “cedar and cypress”, a process that is difficult for people other than specialists to do by visual observation.
“Using this technology, it is easy to assess large-scale forest assets and to accurately judge the amount of CO2 absorbed by a forest consisting of different kinds of trees.
“These tasks have been difficult until now,” he says.
