Greenhouse Farming Business
We are exploring the creation of a new type
of agriculture using fog atomization technology.
Overview of division
IKEUCHI’s Agro Division was created in 2011 to handle everything from R&D to manufacturing and sales for both new cultivation equipment and their relevant software, with the aim of cultivating new agricultural approaches by utilizing fog atomization technologies. In the agricultural field, we currently are engaged in the three new initiatives of promoting a new approach to agriculture using fog, maintaining greenhouse environments with fog, and running a farm.
For the new agricultural approach, we are focusing on developing and promoting a cultivation system named after our company called IKEUCHIPonics®. It will also help deal with food shortages and water resource problems in line with SDGs. Supplying crops with liquid fertilizers as a fog enables cultivation with minimal water use. We expect it to contribute greatly to crop cultivation in desert regions or in space in the future.
For maintaining greenhouse environments with fog, we have developed an environmental control system that cools, humidifies, and sprays chemicals without wetting the crop or the inside of the greenhouse. It utilizes a fine fog, called Semi-Dry Fog® according to our classification of spray droplet size, which is much finer than that of conventional spray cooling equipment produces. This system, by optimally controlling not only temperature but also the humidity deficit optimally for the growth of crops, makes it possible to cultivate that conventionally would be difficult to cultivate in that season as well as year-round cultivation. By automatizing and making pesticide spraying work, which comes with concerns about intense labor and health, an autonomous operation, it succeeds in significantly reducing the burden on agricultural workers.
Finally, we use the products that we developed to carry out agricultural testing and we sell the crops. We have demonstrated a profitable company farm by cultivating tomatoes, lettuce, strawberries, peppers, and wasabi year round. Additionally, we sell our “Tomato Grown with Fog” and “GABA Tomato Grown with Fog” brands at supermarkets, direct-sale facilities, and online stores. Additionally, we are pursuing joint research in areas such as cultivation technologies and environmental control technologies together with universities, NPO research organizations, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), corporations involved in the agricultural field, and other such organizations. By employing fog spraying, we apply continuous temperature and humidity controls, humidity deficit control, and other such controls with the aim of achieving stable crop production throughout the year while striving to achieve higher profitability.
Building the Future of Greenhouse Agriculture
IKEUCHI has a deep relationship with agriculture that goes back to the company’s founding. We heard from an agricultural equipment manufacturer that the nozzles used at the time to spray pesticides had a short lifespan due to wear. Therefore, we got our start developing a ceramic spray nozzle with superior wear resistance, and we supplied it as our first product. Not only that manufacturer, but also the industry as a whole was happy with the nozzle that we developed, and we have maintained a relationship with that manufacturer up to the present, or for about 70 years.
We would go on to use fog technology for a wide range of applications, including spraying water, cleaning, humidification, and moisture conditioning. Since the techniques and knowhow we, the Fog Engineers, have shares a close affinity with agriculture, we believe that we can continue contributing to the development of the industry going forward.
It is said that in the near future, it may be difficult to stably secure food due to a worsening environment, an increasing population, and conflict.
Moreover, it is expected that in Japan the birthrate will continue to decline while the population ages. The stable production of crops and improvements in work environments are urgently needed, and there has been a focus on shifting to efficient production at greenhouses and plant factories through automation/autonomous operation, and by improving approaches to higher yields.
Therefore, one of our important missions is performing research and development for achieving high yields in greenhouses, being able to cultivate year round, and achieving automation and labor savings. The products that we have developed are already in use in many fields, and based on the evaluations and feedback we have obtained, we strive to create better products and a future for greenhouses and agriculture.
