ABSTRACT
This paper describes a unique style of small-scale farming practiced by Kenji Maeda, a full-time herb farmer in Japan, who resides in a local town, but has customers all over the country. He believes that his customers should enjoy the process of growing herbs in their homes. Based on...
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ABSTRACT
In Upper Northern Thailand, most of native chicken farmers in rural areas are elderly. This paper provides an analysis of commercial viability of native chicken farming as an alternative for job opportunities among elder farmers in Phayao Province. Since all processes could not be...
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Introduction
Wild animals pose problems to Japanese farmers, as they often enter farmlands and eat agricultural products. The damage caused by wild animals was recently estimated to cost farmers around 20 billion yen per year1. Electric fences are a popular countermeasure against wild animals....
US-based vertical farming company Oishii has raised $134 million in Series B funding.
Japanese telecom giant NTT led the round with participation from Bloom8, McWin Capital Partners, Mizuho Bank, Mitsubishi Shokuhin Co., Ltd., the Japan Green Investment Corporation for Carbon Neutrality (JICN), and industrial robotics company Yaskawa Electric Corporation.
Oishii will use the new funds to open a solar-powered vertical farming facility, expand into new markets and invest in R&D projects around breeding, robotics and automation.
Oishii expanded availability of its products for the first time in 2023 to the Northeast US. A chunk of the new funding will go towards further expansion, says CEO and co-founder Hiroki Koga.
To do that, Oishii will first need space to grow more produce.
“Right now, we’re really constrained on what we can produce,” he tells AgFunderNews. “We have so much demand from the market, but it took us many years even just to get to [the Northeast US]. Even there, we’re not in nearly as many stores as we want because of production capacity.”
Oishii’s indoor vertical farming facility in Jersey City currently grows two types of strawberries and the recently unveiled Rubī Tomato. All products are available via FreshDirect and select Whole Foods stores in the areas Oishii serves, though supply goes quickly. For instance, the company sells out of its tomatoes in Jersey City so quickly they have yet to reach participating stores in New England, says Koga.
Read more here.