Japanese tractor manufacturer Kubota has recently made the headlines for having developed an app designed for the Southeast Asian market that allows the monitoring of smart farming equipment.
The solution lets farmers enter data whenever they till the soil or spread manure. The data saves time and labor by allowing farmers to record usage times and alerting them when to change batteries or other components, among other capabilities.
The company is betting on smart solutions for the Thai market and has conducted around 100 field tests, from flying drones used to spread fertilizers to designing irrigation systems in Thailand to improve agricultural efficiency.
The Southeast Asian country is characterized by low yields of crops, with a single paddy producing less than half the rice of a comparable paddy in Japan, according to Thailand’s Office of Agricultural Economics. In effect, crop yields in Thailand suffer from an underdeveloped irrigation system.
Kubota aims at solving these challenges by bringing innovations to Thailand, which in parallel is rolling out its own digitalization initiatives. The company already holds an 80% share of tractors in Thailand and is the leading solution provider among rice farmers in the region.
(Source: Far Eastern Agriculture)