Farming without land or farmers: Japan's technology revolution

Near Kyoto, in the Keihanna area, rows of shelves climb towards the ceiling of a factory. On every shelf lettuce is growing, yet there is not a handful of soil in the building and no sky overhead. Light comes from purpose-built LED lamps, water moves through pipes, and machines shift the young plants from one shelf to the next. Spread, the Japanese company that runs this Techno Farm Keihanna, says it has the capacity to produce about 30,000 heads of lettuce a day. It is one window onto the road Japan has taken: growing food with less land and fewer farmers. A world leader in technology and invention, Japan is rewriting the idea of farming itself, and the change is not only about higher yields; it also offers the rest of the world a fresh way to think about food security.

Japan did not take this road out of curiosity. It was pushed. Citing agriculture ministry figures, the Japanese outlet Nippon.com reports that the country had about 2.4 million core agricultural workers, people for whom farming is their main job, in 2000. By 2024 the number had fallen to about 1.1 million. In a little over two decades, the farming population more than halved. Those who remain are old: their average age in 2024 was 69.2, and nearly 72 per cent of them were 65 or older.

The land tells the same tale. According to the same source, Japan had about 6.1 million hectares of farmland in 1961 and about 4.3 million hectares in 2024, a loss of roughly 30 per cent over six decades. Rice paddies show the same trend: from about 2.11 million hectares in 1995 to a projected 1.52 million hectares in 2025. Cities spread, mountain villages emptied, and a good deal of land has no one left to work it. Japan also imports much of what it eats. The Japan Times reports that the country's food self-sufficiency rate on a calorie basis was only 38 per cent in the 2023 financial year.

Ageing farmers, shrinking farmland and a dependence on imported food add up to one hard question: if the people are disappearing, who will grow the food? Japan's answer is machines, data and controlled environments. In 2024 the country passed a law to speed up the use of smart farming technology. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) says the law aims to tackle labour shortages, use resources more efficiently and raise productivity, with financial incentives for farmers, co-operatives and research bodies that invest in new technology.

The most striking face of Japan's new agriculture is vertical farming. In a field, crops spread out side by side. In a vertical farm they are stacked one above the other, on shelves inside multi-storey buildings, so a single patch of floor can hold many times more plants. That is the central trick for getting around a shortage of land.

In these farms automated lighting takes the place of the sun. A computer decides how many hours of light each crop gets and in what colours. Temperature, humidity and even the level of carbon dioxide in the room are held steady. A storm or a snowfall outside makes no difference to the crop inside. Such farming uses about 90 per cent less water than conventional cultivation, because the water does not seep away into the ground; it is collected and used again and again.

That raises a question: how does a plant make food without the sun? The answer lies in the colour of the light. Plants turn light into food in their leaves through photosynthesis, and they rely most on red and blue light. That is why the lamps in many plant factories give off a purple or pink glow: supplying only the colours the plant uses most cuts wasted electricity. LED lamps also give off little heat, so they can sit close to the plants and the shelves can be stacked tightly.

Spread says Techno Farm Keihanna recycles more than 90 per cent of the water it uses. The company says moisture given off by the plants is condensed and reused, so each lettuce needs only a small fraction of the water it would need in an open field. Most of the work, from setting out seedlings to moving grown plants, is done by machines, and light and temperature are tuned with the help of the Internet of Things, meaning networks of devices that exchange data, and artificial intelligence.

The model has limits, and they are worth knowing. Sunlight is free; lamplight costs electricity. That is why such farms today grow mainly lettuce, leafy greens and other quick crops. Growing staple grains such as rice or wheat this way does not yet pay. A vertical farm is not a replacement for the field; it is an extra source of fresh vegetables close to the city.

In a country where the average farmer is close to seventy, it is hard to find young hands for heavy work. So Japan has turned to robots. Machines are now used at every stage: planting, harvesting and storing the crop. Fewer workers can produce more. Advocates of these methods say they can cut the time and labour cost of cultivation by about half.

The Japanese machinery maker Kubota is a good example. The company says that in 2017 it introduced an autonomous tractor that can work a field with nobody in the driver's seat, under a farmer's supervision. Driverless rice transplanters and combine harvesters, machines that cut and thresh grain in one pass, followed in the same line. By Kubota's count, about 700 machines from the series were at work on Japanese farms by 2024. The company has also announced that in April 2027 it will launch a driverless tractor that can be monitored remotely, so that nobody needs to stand in the field the whole time.

These machines use satellite positioning to learn the boundaries of a field, run in straight lines row after row, and stop if a person or obstacle appears ahead. One farmer can run more than one machine at a time, riding in one while another works alongside on its own. For an elderly farmer, driving a tractor all day is punishing; handing that work to a machine frees him to manage the farm with the experience he has.

Unmanned aircraft are not new to Japanese rice fields. Remote-controlled small helicopters were already spraying crops there in the late 1980s. Lighter and cheaper drones are now taking their place, and they come paired with artificial intelligence (AI): computer programs that sift large amounts of data to help people make decisions.

A drone flies over the field and takes pictures. From those pictures, AI can tell which part of the crop is weak, where weeds are thick, and where the soil is short of water or nutrients. Instead of spreading fertiliser or pesticide evenly over the whole field, the farmer can apply it only where it is needed. That lowers cost and lowers the chemical load on the environment. Surveying soil, watching crop health and spotting weeds: in all three jobs the drone has become the Japanese farmer's assistant.

AI has another big role: forecasting. By combining weather data, past yields and the growth rate of the plants, a computer can predict what a field is likely to yield and when the crop will be ready. The farmer can then plan labour, machines and marketing. Deciding on the basis of data rather than guesswork is the real strength of this technology.

Hydroponics sounds technical, but the idea is plain: growing plants in water instead of soil. The roots sit in water laced with nutrients, or in a supporting material such as coconut fibre or gravel. Everything the plant needs, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and other elements, is dissolved in that water in measured amounts. In soil, roots have to search for food; here the food comes straight to them, which is why the plants grow fast.

Soil-free growing means the water has to be checked regularly. Too many nutrients can scorch the roots and too few leave the plant weak; water that is too acidic or too alkaline stops the plant taking up its food at all. In Japan's large farms machines do this measuring and, when a reading drifts out of range, correct it by adding nutrients or changing the water. On small farms growers take the readings with a handheld meter once or twice a day.

Aquaponics goes a step further by raising fish and vegetables together. Waste builds up in the water of the fish tank; that water is sent to the roots of the plants. Helpful bacteria turn the waste into plant food, the plants absorb it, and the cleaned water flows back to the fish. One body of water yields two crops: fish and vegetables.

With no soil, soil-borne diseases and many pests largely disappear, and so does much of the need for chemicals. Because the water circulates, little is wasted. That is why the method is described as environmentally friendly and sustainable. In Japan, alongside the big plant factories, small entrepreneurs are growing greens, tomatoes and strawberries this way.

A greenhouse is a growing house of glass or clear plastic that lets sunlight in but keeps out cold, storms and heavy rain. Japan's modern greenhouses add automatic control. Small devices called sensors measure temperature, humidity and light moment by moment. When it gets too hot, vents open and shade screens come down on their own; when the air dries out, a fine mist starts; when light is poor, extra lamps switch on.

In a country of earthquakes, typhoons and heavy snow, such systems are an effective way to shield crops from natural disasters. A farmer can check conditions inside on a mobile phone and change the settings from far away. One person can now look after a far larger area than before.

Japan's experience points to several clear benefits. The first is making the most of limited resources: vertical farming and soil-free cultivation produce far more food from a small space, which counts for a great deal wherever land is scarce.

The second is sustainable output. Measured use of water, fertiliser and pesticide keeps yields high while protecting the environment. The third is a response to food shortages. Populations are growing and so is demand for food; farming in controlled environments can produce steadily all year round and help meet that demand.

The fourth is a faster crop cycle. Because light, heat and nutrients can be held at ideal levels, the time from sowing to harvest can reportedly be cut by about 30 to 40 per cent, so the same space yields more harvests a year. The fifth is the prospect of lower cost and better returns. When robots and drones replace human labour, labour costs fall over time, although the up-front investment in machines is large.

The first thing Japan's farming revolution tells the world is that technology is a powerful tool in the fight for food security. Even as land and labour shrink, invention can hold output steady. In many countries farmers are ageing and young people are leaving the villages; Japan is living that future early and searching for ways to cope.

The second message concerns climate change. Erratic rain, drought, floods and heatwaves make field crops ever less certain. Farming in controlled environments can shelter crops from much of that volatility. Making agriculture greener with advanced technology, and cutting its carbon emissions as far as possible, is a stated goal of the effort. Still, the environmental gain of an electricity-hungry farm depends heavily on where the power comes from; without renewable sources the sums can change.

There is a point here for shoppers too. Vegetables travel a long way from field to city market; on trucks, in wholesale yards and on shop shelves much of the produce spoils or loses its freshness. Farms inside or around the city shorten that journey. Greens picked in the morning can be on the plate by lunchtime, and less transport means less fuel burned.

The third message is for developing countries. The Japanese model shows that more can be produced from limited resources. There is no need to import every machine wholesale; what matters is picking the parts that fit local conditions, such as careful water use, decisions based on data, and vegetable production close to cities.

For Bangladesh the question is even more urgent. In one of the most densely populated countries on earth, farmland is lost every year to housing, roads, factories and urban growth. At the same time many young people from the villages leave for towns or for work abroad, and in many areas labour runs short at rice planting and harvest time. Japan's problems and Bangladesh's are not identical, but they point the same way: more food from less land and fewer hands.

Bangladesh can learn from Japan how technology can help farming get around the limits of land and labour. Vertical farming and automation in particular could transform urban agriculture. Small controlled-environment farms around cities such as Dhaka and Chattogram could supply fresh vegetables while cutting transport costs and losses on the way to market.

Some work has already begun. The Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI) has worked on techniques for growing vegetables in water without soil. To encourage rooftop gardens, the government announced in 2023 that building owners in all city corporations and municipalities would get a 10 per cent rebate on holding tax for gardening on their roofs, The Business Standard reported. Machines for rice planting and harvesting are slowly spreading, and the trial use of drones to spray crops is under discussion.

The government has also backed machines in the field. Under a mechanisation project worth about 30.2 billion taka, approved in July 2019, farmers received subsidies of 50 per cent on the plains and up to 70 per cent in the haor wetlands to buy combine harvesters, rice transplanters and other machines. A single combine harvester costs roughly three to four million taka, far beyond an ordinary farmer without help. Bangladeshi newspapers have since reported that mechanisation slowed after the project ended and the subsidy stopped. Japan's experience suggests that spreading technology takes long-term, consistent policy support.

Bangladeshi conditions call for care, though. Machines priced for Japan are beyond the reach of small farmers, so access through co-operatives or hire services will be essential. Uncertain electricity prices and supply could raise the cost of vertical farms, where solar power may offer an answer. And however advanced a technology is, it is of little use in the field without training for the farmers who must run it.

The biggest lesson of Japan's farming revolution may not be any particular machine, but the willingness to farm differently. Japan did not hide its problem. It put the figures on its ageing farmers and vanishing farmland in plain view, then looked for answers through law, investment and research. Bangladeshi farmers have long shown an appetite for new varieties, new machines and new methods. Joined to the right technology, training and policy support, that appetite could make farming more profitable, greener and more modern.

The lettuce on the shelves at Keihanna will not replace the rice fields of Bangladesh. But it is a reminder that there is more than one way to grow food. With land shrinking, people moving to cities and weather growing less predictable, the key to the farming of the coming years lies in joining the experience of the field to the knowledge that technology brings.

Photo: Lettuce growing hydroponically in a vertical farm, Bright Agrotech / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)