Japan plants seeds of hi-tech agriculture

More Japanese investors are looking to cultivate hi-tech agricultural projects in Vietnam Photo: Le Toan

Le Van Tu, vice director of investment consulting firm Japan-Vietnam Commercial Investment Company, told VIR the company was helping Shii Company based in Japan’s Miyazaki prefecture to implement a major hi-tech project to produce clean vegetables in Hanoi.

“Shii is conducting market research in Vietnam in terms of output and investment policies, before deciding on how much to invest, but I think it’ll be a pretty large sum,” Tu said.

Tu’s company has also been helping many Japanese agricultural firms do business in Vietnam in cattle rearing and vegetable plantation and production.

At a recent meeting between the Ministry of Planning and Investment and leaders of Japan’s Tokyo Mitsubishi Bank, the Japanese financial giant said it would boost loans for Japanese firms to implement agricultural projects in Vietnam. They said the bank and Vietnamese partners could jointly develop product clusters. This would help improve Vietnamese product added value. The bank would take its clients to Vietnam.

In late October 2014, Japan’s IT developer Fujitsu and Vietnam’s FPT inked an agreement on deploying Fujitsu’s Akisai Cloud, which is used to support agricultural management via cloud computing, during 2015-2016. The agreement will help Fujitsu, which earned the total global revenue of $46 billion in 2013, to carve a stronger niche in Vietnam. Fujitsu will build a greenhouse in Hanoi and pilot the application of the Akisai management system to a type of crop. The greenhouse will also be for showcasing high-tech solutions to develop a smart agriculture model for Vietnam.

Former Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, currently president of the East Asean Community Institute, said Vietnam and Japan had outlined a master plan on applying high-tech solutions in Vietnam’s agricultural development. “The master plan will be implemented soon, with the participation of many Japanese IT groups.”

“We expect we can cultivate some hi-tech projects in Vietnam as we are successfully doing in Japan. These projects will also include co-operation with local farmers in cultivating and marketing products,” Sato said.

Being one of Japan’s biggest agricultural firms, Wagoen provides clean vegetables for Tokyo and many other cities in Japan’s eastern region.

In May 2014, Japanese companies, Always and Veggy, visited the northern province of Vinh Phuc in search of investment opportunities so as to establish a joint venture with a Vietnamese company for a high-tech project to produce clean vegetables, which would be sold to Japanese restaurants in Vietnam and exported to Japan. The export turnover for the first year of the first stage on an 5-10 hectare operation was estimated to be $1 million. The second stage would be expanded to 50ha.

Many Japanese firms like Yanmar, Maruyama MFG, MaruMasu Kikai, Nankai Kinzoku also expressed their intentions to expand agricultural machinery exports to the country.