Development of Micro-precision Agriculture by Plant Factory

The LISA (Low-Input Sustainable Agriculture) program was launched to reduce the use of off-farm inputs with the greatest potential to harm the environment or the health of farmers and consumers. This is one of the operational definitions of sustainable agriculture. However, LISA has not gained appreciable support from the agricultural sector, since the nature of LISA decreases profits. On the other hand, the implementation of Precision Agriculture (PA) has been embraced. The difference between PA and LISA is that PA requires technological innovation, whereas LISA always involves revising or improving traditional practices. The extensive application of information technology, including GPS and GIS, to agriculture, and the development of agricultural machinery for PA are major factors for the difference between PA and LISA. The machinery includes equipment to implement variable rate technologies, and vehicles specifically designed to gather the information required to generate yield and soil maps. There are quite a few plant factories operating commercially in Japan. PA is nothing but integrated technology, designed to optimize the cultivation process. The fully controlled environment of a plant factory can be considered as an ideal cultivation system in terms of alternative agriculture. Most of the environmental factors in a fully controlled plant factory are observable and controllable; a plant factory can be optimized more easily than an open field. Microprecision agriculture can be attained by using plant factories to realize profitable alternative agriculture. This article reviews the scientific and technological achievements of plant factories as alternative agriculture, and introduces a hardware system developed to implement microprecision agriculture in a plug seedling production factory.