Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Sensor Network Makes Life Easier For Japan's Aging Rice Farmers

Posted by Soulskill on from the spread-of-ubiquitous-tech dept.

szczys writes: The average age of Japan's rice farmers is 65-70 years old. The work is difficult and even small changes to the way things are done can have a profound impact on these lives. The flooded paddies where the rice is grown must maintain a consistent water level, which means farmers must regularly traverse the terraced fields to check many different paddies. A simple sensor board is changing this, letting farmers check their fields by phone instead of in person.

This might not sound like much, but reducing the number of times someone needs to walk the fields has a big effect on the man-hours spent on each crop. The system, called TechRice, is inexpensive and the nodes recharge batteries from a solar cell. The data is aggregated on the Internet and can be presented as a webpage, a text-message interface, or any other reporting scheme imaginable by utilizing the API of the Open Source software. This is a testament to the power we have as small groups of engineers to improve the world.

91 comments

  1. So it's come to this...hyper-rice? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    http://psychopass.wikia.com/wiki/Hyper-oats

    Life something something art

  2. Labor reduction by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 3, Informative

    Fewer man-hours, more rice from less work, fewer farmers, less time spent working, less paid in wages, more produced, cheaper rice.

    We still have people claiming value and wealth come from land, not from labor. Marx claimed more labor to produce a product meant more value and thus more wealth; I've outright demonstrated wealth comes from reducing labor spent on producing goods.

    Then again, I abandoned theories of value when I started making my economic theories; I'm writing a theory of *wealth*, not an explanation of how something's inherent price comes along. Value was always a stupid idea with no place in macroeconomics.

    --
    Support my political activism on Patreon.
    1. Re:Labor reduction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Monetary wealth comes from scarcity. Physical wealth comes from building things.

      Labor is just a means to get wealth. You can get physical labor thru automation or throwing more people at it.

      no place in macroeconomics
      Dont know. Sure is good in judging labor pools and how much to pay them.

    2. Re:Labor reduction by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

      Fewer man-hours, more rice from less work, fewer farmers, less time spent working, less paid in wages, more produced, cheaper rice.

      The way to get cheaper rice is for Japan to ratify TPP, kick these farmers off the dole, and buy rice from Thailand or Louisiana for a tenth the price.

      We still have people claiming value and wealth come from land, not from labor.

      In this case, it comes from neither. I comes from massive subsidies, tariffs, and artificial price supports.

    3. Re:Labor reduction by ajzimm3rman · · Score: 0

      True. "Real value" exists only in the minds of politicians advancing their agenda. "Value" is determined by BOTH parties: consumer and producer. Those who disagree with this notion forget: the producer will get NOTHING unless they lower their price to an acceptable amount. They always complain about producers like they CONTROL the market, when in reality consumers control everything (that isn't controlled by the government and their protected oligarchies).

    4. Re:Labor reduction by MarkvW · · Score: 1

      Wealth comes from a lot of things.

    5. Re:Labor reduction by jader3rd · · Score: 1

      I'm writing a theory of *wealth*

      Is it called On the Wealth of Nations?

    6. Re:Labor reduction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The way to get cheaper rice is for Japan to ratify TPP, kick these farmers off the dole, and buy rice from Thailand or Louisiana for a tenth the price.

      Years ago I was stationed on a military base in Japan, and had a Japanese girlfriend. I would buy a 25 lb sack of American rice at the PX every week, and sneak it off base (rice smuggling was illegal). It was WAY cheaper than the Japanese rice, and it was enough to feed her extended family (parents, siblings, cousins, etc.). Later, she wanted to dump me, and her parents pressured her to keep the relationship going, so they would continue to get their rice.

    7. Re:Labor reduction by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The way to get cheaper rice is for Japan to ratify TPP, kick these farmers off the dole, and buy rice from Thailand or Louisiana for a tenth the price.

      Labor may be overpriced; but you can't reduce costs by just reducing labor price. That's a large and important part of my economic theories--it's why I argue for a Citizen's Dividend to replace minimum wage (and our current welfare system), and why a progressive tax system is good--but the primary mechanism of improving wealth is decreasing labor invested in producing goods. Hunter-gatherers could only provide enough food to sustain, at an optimistic estimate, 136 million humans on earth, at a cost of 15-20 labor-hours per day per human fed; now we sustain 7 billion humans, at a labor cost of 27 labor-hours per YEAR per human fed.

      In this case, it comes from neither. I comes from massive subsidies, tariffs, and artificial price supports.

      That's mercantilism and protectionism, and it actually reduces wealth.

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
    8. Re:Labor reduction by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      Not really. I'm working on it.

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
    9. Re:Labor reduction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Marx claimed more labor to produce a product meant more value and thus more wealth; I've outright demonstrated wealth comes from reducing labor spent on producing goods.

      Um, debunking Marx is always fun, but debunking gross and incorrect oversimplifications of Marx is annoying

      Here is an exact quote from Marx: "Labor is not the source of all wealth."

    10. Re:Labor reduction by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      I was going to call it that, but the name was taken. Due to the principle of short names (shorter-named papers get more attention and generally draw more credibility), I titled it, "The Growth of Wealth", with the subheading, "A Treatise on the Origins and Development of the Wealth of Nations."

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
    11. Re:Labor reduction by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 2

      Other anthropologists claim they worked much less, as little as 2 hours per day "oh woe the modern worker".

      In any case, their nutrition was vastly low, as much larger humans grew with farming, and much larger still with a free economy that choked aisles with cheap food. So I am not sure how well their lighter workday was for them. And forget tv and phones and modern medicine.

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    12. Re:Labor reduction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not really. I'm working on it.

      Wealth, in the sense of the wealth of nations or the wealth of whatever unit of economic activity
      you choose to define as an economy, indicates the Total Buying Power divided by the total
      population: Wealth is the per capita Buying Power. The Wealth of nations has a strong impact on
      their ability to provide welfare services, as well as on the standard of living in each Income class..

      Wealth comes solely and entirely from the reduction of labor required to produce a product—a good or service.

      I read that thing, and I don't get how Lady Gaga increased wealth "solely and entirely from the reduction of labor required to produce a product"

    13. Re:Labor reduction by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 2

      You're right; I keep quoting that per day, but it's per week. 15-20 hours per week. Sahlin and Richard Borshay Lee did studies on modern hunter-gatherer societies to refine their historical projections. It's around 4-6 hours per day.

      The USDA Census from 2012 shows 3,233,358 farm operators in the USA. With a US population of 314,100,000 and an agricultural work week of 50 hours, that's approximately 27 working hours per person per year. The fifteen hours of food acquisition per person would total 245 billion hours per year, but the US only spent 8.5 billion hours on farming in total.

      That's using the low projection of 2.14 hours per day. As an agrarian society, with modern, industrial farming methods and GMO crops, we save 237 billion hours of working labor time.

      In theory, that means 3.5% of our population has to go to work getting food, rather than 38%-50%; in reality, comparing to a 40 hour work week where 15 hours goes to food, it's more like 1.3% of our population has to work getting food, rather than 38%-50%. Anhtropologists argue much of the remaining time was spent on food preparation, but don't always mention things like establishing security for the mud huts, child-raising, weapons and clothing manufacture, and so forth, all much more labor-intensive then (now we have school buildings and brick walls).

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
    14. Re:Labor reduction by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

      Labor may be overpriced; but you can't reduce costs by just reducing labor price.

      This is not just (or even mostly) about unit labor costs. Rice farming in Japan is incredibly inefficient. Japan does not have a good climate for growing rice. It is too cold, and the rains come at the wrong time. Land ownership is highly fragmented, so you see tiny little plots, far too small for normal farm machinery. So instead you see a 70 year old with a roto-tiller preparing his plot, and then later stooped over, planting individual plants by hand. In a first world country, that is an insane waste of manpower. If/when the subsidies end, these farms will immediately switch to producing high value fruits and vegetables, which are suited to the climate and require far less labor.

    15. Re:Labor reduction by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 2

      This is not just (or even mostly) about unit labor costs. Rice farming in Japan is incredibly inefficient.

      That's labor costs per unit. That's exactly what I said.

      In a good climate with good soil, you may produce 6 tonnes per hectare of rice using a total 10,000 labor-hours. In a bad climate with bad soil, you may produce 2 tonnes per hectare of rice using a total 40,000 labor-hours. That means 1/3 as much rice, 4 times as much labor, 12 times as much labor per unit of rice produced. That labor includes agricultural workers, fertilizer manufacture, water treatment and transport for irrigation, power generation and coal mining for electricity to run the pumps, transport of fertilizer, and so forth. Reduce the amount of irrigation required and you reduce the amount of coal mined, the amount of water treated, and the amount of pumps used to pump water--reducing the labor invested. Reduce the amount of fertilizer, same deal. Get more out of the same land and these things multiply, because you're tending less land.

      Again: You can't reduce costs just by reducing labor price. Kicking farmers off the dole, reducing their subsidies, reducing their working hour costs, and so forth will bring labor costs down, but only so far. If you want to reduce labor costs significantly in the long term, you must reduce invested labor hours per unit productive output.

      That's what inefficient *means*.

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
    16. Re:Labor reduction by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

      "The way to get cheaper rice is for Japan to ratify TPP, kick these farmers off the dole, and buy rice from Thailand or Louisiana for a tenth the price."

      While it's true that Japanese rice is massively subsidized so that a small number of "medallion farmers" can continue selling it in an artificially controlled domestic monopoly that keeps low-cost competition out, this technology is applicable to any reasonably civilized country that grows rice, lowering the cost of production there.

      It's bad enough that this legal model would be applied to a basic foodstuff, true evil would be applying it to the medications that people critically depend on.

    17. Re:Labor reduction by Harlequin80 · · Score: 1

      Except this doesn't solve the other issue which is Japan wants to have, as much as is possible, the ability to feed its population from domestic food sources.

    18. Re:Labor reduction by charrington · · Score: 1

      Modern Japanese consumers refuse to eat rice from Thailand. They *may* eat rice imported from the US if it is the variety grown in Japan and tastes the same. There was a big shortage in the 90s and they tried importing Thai rice. Very few ate it. The variety is completely different and tastes completely different, and therefore is not seen as being "rice" by the typical housewife.

      Certainly, there is need for reform, but this situation is a bit more complicated than you think. TPP passed anyway, though, so we'll see what comes of it.

    19. Re:Labor reduction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Marx claimed more labor to produce a product meant more value and thus more wealth

      Funnily enough, it was during that same party Lincoln said one should not believe everything he reads on the Internet.

    20. Re:Labor reduction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A long as nobody is starving in Japan it doesn't seem like a big deal to inflate the price of rice and control the importation of cheap rice that doesn't support a culturally significant social program.

    21. Re:Labor reduction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My friend grew up in a village in Alaska. During the fishing runs, her brothers went out in boats and worked in twilight conditions for days at a time, with very little sleep, with the work translating directly into fish caught. These are absolutely lionized men, born and raised to catch fish in this way, and it still was a tremendous ordeal, and very dangerous work. There is no way they could have vegetated for the months before and after the fish run to meet the quoted research average, they simply would not have been in shape.

      I also wonder how the research accounts for the increased difficulty in hunting and gathering food during winter in temperate zones, with less daylight in which to do either.

      While Alaska could be considered an extreme example where people are thought to be fully dependent on a single source of food in an unthinkably inhospitable climate, this practice is also followed by tribes that fish and hunt whales in the tropics.

    22. Re:Labor reduction by bjwest · · Score: 1

      Is cheaper rice really a good thing though? What good is $1/lb rice over $3/lb rice when we have to spend an extra $8/lb to cover the social welfare costs so the farmers who formally grew the rice can afford to purchase that rice to feed their family?

      --

      --- Keep the choice with the user..
    23. Re:Labor reduction by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      What good is $1/lb rice over $3/lb rice when we have to spend an extra $8/lb to cover the social welfare costs so the farmers who formally grew the rice can afford to purchase that rice to feed their family?

      You're making a false dichotomy. Go back to colonial America--yes, that recent--and even England had no notable welfare system. England implemented old-age pensions and unemployment insurance before the United States, and unemployment insurance was hotly debated because of expense--with people citing old-age pensions as having worked out fine in support; now unemployment insurance is ... a tiny, tiny thing. Why do you think that is?

      Our social welfare systems in America cost 1.5% of taxed AGI back in 1950--including social security. Back in 1790, such social welfare systems would have bankrupt America--not required 30% of our taxable money, but required 500% of our taxable money. That 1% income tax they levied in 1820 covered some extremely minor functions of government on a small body of people, without the costs of things like communications infrastructure, space-age military, interstate highways, ICBM launch silos, nuclear submarine programs, or military satellite systems. America's navy wasn't England's; wooden ships were expensive, but we relied on militia men and a standing army rather than infinite sea power, since well-armed galleons wouldn't stop invasion from our two fucking huge borders. A standing militia is cheap.

      The fact is these systems of $1/lb rice over $3/lb rice have made enough excessive wealth for us to actually implement those social welfare programs and still come out richer. We were once a nation--once a world--of blacksmiths and farmers, with the blacksmiths mostly supporting the farmers with plows and scythes; now farmers are 0.25% of our population. We're reaching a point where our current-model welfare system--the social programs system--is growing out of control in cost, while minimum wage--a good system for the 1900s--is actually threatening to undermine the economy; and, at this point, we can implement a Citizen's Dividend system which will continuously reduce its minimum operating cost (I argue, as a matter of policy, to lock the financing sources and just let the minimum standard of living grow as our nation becomes more wealthy), eliminating both problems and completely ending homelessness and hunger forever.

      That's what cheaper rice gets you. It's what every step in history has been: cheaper metal products (blacksmiths go away), automatic elevators (bellhops go away), more food from less land (lots of farmers go away), advanced low-cost materials like plastic (shipping costs drop because fuel needs go down, manufacturing labor drops, and lots of people in many sectors need new jobs), and so forth have steadily cut down the price of a T-shirt from $4,000 (479 labor-hours at $8.25/hr minimum wage, a la 1820, before the power loom entered wide deployment) to $15 (8.6 hours at $1.73/hr) and moved the labor elsewhere. That labor, moved elsewhere, does other things: we still have t-shirts, but we also have rockets that go to the moon, and social programs that keep people from starving.

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
  3. improve the world by gutting jobs? by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 2

    improve the world by gutting jobs?

    What happens when people have to start taking food from the farm to feed there family?

    1. Re:improve the world by gutting jobs? by ajzimm3rman · · Score: 0

      Idiot. "Gutting jobs?" Somebody needs to take an economics course. It appears the common complaint nowadays is a rush to exclaim the jobs will be lost to any kind of innovation. If jobs are the priority, why don't we have the government institute a national shovel workforce and raise taxes to 50%? We can have the government hand out money to people that shovel holes, and have a 100% employment rate. Would that raise the standard of living for the common person? These ridiculous outcries of jobs being lost are from people that do not understand economics, and have a zero-sum view of the world.

    2. Re:improve the world by gutting jobs? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

      improve the world by gutting jobs?

      Prosperity comes from the production of goods and services, not by "keeping people busy". Japan has a declining population and serious labor shortages. Labor intensive rice farming in Japan makes no economic sense, and is only kept going with massive subsidies funded by taxing the productive economy.

      The automation and sensors described in TFA are also stupid, since they just make a stupid system slightly less so. A far better solution would be for Japan to buy rice from countries with lower labor costs and climates friendlier to rice production. The the rice farmers in Japan can find productive employment. For instance, they could grow high value fruits and vegetables.

    3. Re:improve the world by gutting jobs? by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 2

      Originally, the earth could support fewer than 136 million humans. We were working 15-20 hours per one person per day as hunter-gatherers, foraging food.

      Today, we work fewer than 27 hours per YEAR to obtain food for each one person. We produce more food on less land. In 1970, India produced 2 tonnes of rice per hectare at a price of $550/tonne, scaling to over $3,000/tonne by inflation in 2001; in 1995, India was producing 6 tonnes of rice per hectare, and by 2001 the rice commanded a price of under $200/tonne. That means less labor invested in producing rice--in fact, under 6% as much labor per dry weight of rice (and per calorie!).

      With all this free time, we built giant fucking rockets and sent men to the moon.

      The total buying power of an arbitrary economy (including the whole universe, although we can theorize a single country like the U.S.) is the total productive output. This makes sense: you can only trade what is produced; and each thing requires labor-hours to produce. It eventually comes down to the minimum cost of labor, with a theoretical bound of however much it costs to keep that labor alive and functioning. That means the cost of labor required to produce food, shelter, clothing, and so forth, whatever your society has provided as "minimum standard of living", is your minimum labor cost.

      Currencies hold the same buying power as total productivity. In the case of hard currencies--gold, silver, copper--the labor required to obtain more at any given time compares to the total productivity, which can radically destabilize the buying power of currency when gold mines open up (gold prospectors during the California rush were dropping sizable nuggets for picks and shovels). Fiat currencies are more stable and easily dealt with: they pay for labor, and come into issue by debt or central bank minting. The increase of currency in greater proportion than the increase in production is inflation; a slower currency increase than productivity increase is deflation.

      The amount of currency in play is income. If you have $100 trillion but you only make business income and pay wages to the tune of $12 trillion in one year, the amount of currency is, essentially, $12 trillion. Income includes business profits and individual wages.

      The buying power of currency, thus, is the total income divided by the total productivity. This lags because it's not a hard feature: it's an elastic market behavior which self-corrects, and so is prone to distortion (e.g. west-coast high prices, low suburban prices) and influence (e.g. cheap shipping means west-coast high prices become west-coast low prices as competition with east-coast cheap products delivers at lower labor costs or lower profit margins than west-coast products). It's also inherently arbitrary: although it self-corrects over time, we can most easily discuss it in more general terms such as the production and income of a fiscal year. You'll always have meaningful numbers, but never absolute, concrete numbers; understanding that limitation is critical.

      The total wealth, on the other hand, is the total buying power divided by the total population--the per-capita buying power. Because of constant, absolute economic behaviors, this *always* increases. For one thing, if productivity can scale linearly with population--if 10% more labor-hours worked means 10% more of everything produced--then you can increase population without diminishing wealth. On the other hand, if you hit a super-linear cost situation--10% more labor-hours worked means 5% more of everything--people become poor, and the lowest laborers starve or require more buying power (not just more income, but income worth more labor). Raising the cost of low-end labor creates a sort of feedback loop which slows, then erodes, the economy, and so will tend to force people downward in living standard and put a firm psychological and financial halt to population expansion. This limit on growth is partly "So it is, so it's always been", but also will

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
    4. Re:improve the world by gutting jobs? by theNetImp · · Score: 1

      You don't understand the situation here, and as someone who has visited the very rice fields this device is used in, I can tell you I've see this first hand. Japan is suffering a crisis right now where young Japanese want to live and work in the city. It is to the point where some small towns will give away houses to young families willing to come to the country side to live and work. There are job opportunities, but no one to fill them. A single person is doing the work of many. Not only are they doing more work, they are well into their 50s some even their 60s, and working all those fields as they age it is going to become harder for them to walk and work all those fields. With this technology it will help them do more with less.

      Basically I'm saying... shut the fuck up about something you have no idea about.

    5. Re:improve the world by gutting jobs? by theNetImp · · Score: 1

      The problem remains the same. You still need workers to work the trees, and most young Japanese don't want to do that they want to work and raise their kids in the city.

    6. Re: improve the world by gutting jobs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Idiot. Someone needs to take an English class. 'Jobs' in the political argument you cite, is a poor substitute for a concept. It's called livelihood. When people lose their livelihood and find they are economically disadvantaged by their dependent relationship between outsourced or offshored employment, expensive requirement of relocation, lack of valuable job skills or functional capacity, they suffer. If they become a 'burden to society' and require public assistance, the cost is borne by all (or ignored as inevitable poverty).

      Suffering and social costs aren't covered in Wealth of Nations or lower level economics courses like the ones you've managed to struggle through. Classical economics like the Austrian School treat aggregate wealth (and its associated power) as an abstract paramount end goal of a 'nation' in the absence absence of concern for the cost of transition, especially for individuals or families.

      'Jobs' are important in this regard, even to market capitalists who would rather believe that labor is just another asset to be redistributed by the Invisible Hand.

    7. Re:improve the world by gutting jobs? by Penguinisto · · Score: 2

      It is to the point where some small towns will give away houses to young families willing to come to the country side to live and work.

      Apropos of nothing, I would be totally down with filling one of those slots... but I suspect that as a gaijin, that ain't gonna happen anytime soon.

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    8. Re:improve the world by gutting jobs? by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 1

      That's what you get for an engineered demographic collapse.

      --
      SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
    9. Re:improve the world by gutting jobs? by charrington · · Score: 2

      From a food security standpoint, gutting domestic production and buying exclusively from foreign countries is about the stupidest thing you could do, but It's easy to suggest by those who live in the US or Europe, areas that produce more food than they need.

    10. Re:improve the world by gutting jobs? by radarskiy · · Score: 1

      If reduction in labor required for agricultural production could cause economic collapse, it would have happened by now since most of the reduction has already occurred.

    11. Re:improve the world by gutting jobs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There may be a new theory to explain how it happens, but where I live the landowners still get their cut, and it's way more than a tithe.

    12. Re:improve the world by gutting jobs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What you are suggesting is basically what pulled America out of the great Depression and provided the largest economic boost in history, which we are still benefiting from today (huge amounts of our public infrastructure, roads, etc).

      Or, since you only mentioned shovels, maybe you're talking about the Panama Canal? Again, something that we're still benefiting from today.

      Yes, the government should provide jobs performing useful tasks for society to benefit from, and if necessary raise taxes to cover it. One of the main reasons we have the amazing lifestyle we have today is because of the benefits provided by living as a society and the government doing things that are not economically feasible for individual organizations.

    13. Re:improve the world by gutting jobs? by theNetImp · · Score: 1

      You'd be surprised. Currently in the area around HackerFarm there are a few gaijin tech workers that work from home that have moved to there, and many of them help in the rice fields part time. If you have a valid means to get a visa then it wouldn't be hard for you to get involved.

    14. Re:improve the world by gutting jobs? by charrington · · Score: 1

      I'll second the other reply to your comment. If you are actually interested in committing to growing rice, most rural areas would welcome you. It's a lot of work, and it's a serious commitment, so it's not for everyone, but if you have independent income (or are self employed and can work remotely), then it's an interesting lifestyle to try.

      The locals, particularly the older farmers, have mostly come to terms with the fact that their way of life is dying, so even complete outsiders willing to carry on the tradition are welcomed. They base their trust on apparent commitment more than anything. If you work with them, cut the grass with them, plant the rice with them, they'll welcome you whole heartedly.

  4. If only the Khmer Rouge had this tech... by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 1

    If only the Khmer Rouge had this tech...

    1. Re:If only the Khmer Rouge had this tech... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The Khmer Rouge would not have had any one to repair it when it broke, just like everything else in the country more complicated than a cleaver.

      If it couldn't be fixed by dumping a huge pile of dead bodies on top of it, then the Khmer Rouge couldn't fix it.

    2. Re:If only the Khmer Rouge had this tech... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, but you'll work harder with a gun in your back for a bowl of rice a day.

  5. Promote longer life? Not so fast by sideslash · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Who is likely to live longer? A farmer who trudges out in the elements every day and works hard to keep his operation going, or a computer operator who sits in a chair and has so many things automated that there's almost nothing remaining that requires significant manual effort?

    The way the summary is written shows some laughably naive understandings of human longevity. Farming is one of the most dangerous occupations, but I assure you that the aspects of hard work and being toughened by the elements are NOT bad for you, generally speaking.

  6. Rice is for cows. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You are all cows. Cows say moo. MOOOO! MOOOOO! Moo cows MOOOOO! Moo say the cows. YOU NIP COWS!!

  7. rice by JohnVanVliet · · Score: 1

    the BIG question is
    How much will there ISP / telecom charge for the wireless data plan needed ???
    1 months wages ?
    2 months wages ?
    3 months wages ?
    ????

    --
    "I don't pitch OpenSUSE Linux to my friends, i let Microsoft do it for me
  8. By phone, no, thanks. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    By phone is more expensive than by Internet (WiFi).

    1. Re:By phone, no, thanks. by szczys · · Score: 1

      In this particular situation many of the farmers have cellphones that allow texting but not smartphones or other Internet connections.

    2. Re:By phone, no, thanks. by theNetImp · · Score: 1

      The area this is setup in doesn't have a nearby wifi source, and therefore mobile is the only way to go.

    3. Re: By phone, no, thanks. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You don't need a smartphone to deliver simple information like a water level. The data could be gathered over a mesh network and automagically delivered to pagers or accessed using an IVR (integrated voice response) system.

      Smartphones could allow greater information density or even remote device control, but the latter brings security concerns and increases possible risk of human error.

      Open the floodgates!

  9. Sigh... by djupedal · · Score: 0

    >this is a testament to the power we have as small groups of engineers to improve the world.

    Why did you have to ruin your post with that kind of aggrandizement? Such a sweeping statement is pointless and by now you should know that doing good doesn't mean you need to crow about your deeds as part of the process.

    1. Re:Sigh... by narcc · · Score: 1

      What's wrong with that? Very often, simple technical solutions can have a profound impact.

      doing good doesn't mean you need to crow about your deeds as part of the process.

      I don't read this as bragging. I read this as an inspirational message -- you can impact the world in a positive way. You don't need to make some revolutionary discovery or technology, just a few dedicated people with the right skills can make a big difference.

      I also see a charge implied here: "Now go and change the world." I see nothing wrong with either of those things.

      --
      Required reading for internet skeptics
  10. Re:Promote longer life? Not so fast by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    People who are active in their later years are more likely to live longer. My father retired to a trailer park. He helped a neighbor save money on county dumping fees by breaking down old vending machines, recycling the metals and cleaning up the wood. He gave the wood to a neighbor who built chicken coops for sale. He made $50 per month from the metals he took to the recycling center. That lasted several years until someone complained to the county and a county inspector declared that he was running an illegal recycling operation. He died about six months later, having nothing better to do.

  11. Re:Promote longer life? Not so fast by djupedal · · Score: 1

    >The way the summary is written shows some laughably naive understandings of human longevity. For starters, yes, I agree. It seems more like a kickstarter pitch rather than a way to help anyone in general.

  12. Re:Promote longer life? Not so fast by sideslash · · Score: 2

    Good on your dad for his initiative, and boo to overzealous bureaucrats.

  13. japan has universal health care by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    japan has universal health care

    1. Re:japan has universal health care by KGIII · · Score: 1

      I'm completely and totally baffled - to the point of commenting.

      I mean, yes, Japan has universal health care. That's true. Is this the only fact you know about Japan or something? I guess my point is that I'm not seeing what their health care system has to do with the comments made by the parent poster. You might well have just said that, "Japan is an island nation near China."

      Maybe I am missing something? If so then please enlighten me. Perhaps it's a koan and I need to meditate on it.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  14. Re:Promote longer life? Not so fast by ajzimm3rman · · Score: 0

    Just one factor that proves you're short sighted and incorrect: http://animals.mom.me/snakes-r... Rice fields have poisonous snakes.

  15. Re:Promote longer life? Not so fast by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

    My grandmother lived to be 102, and all she did in her later years was sit on her butt and post anecdotes to Internet forums.

  16. Why those guys aren't retired anyway? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Could that be that they simply can't retire? How about some innovation in the citizen welfare front? No "small group of engineers" needed also...

    1. Re:Why those guys aren't retired anyway? by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Pretty soon no one in America can afford to retire. With the baby boomers retiring and the tax base (young workers) shrinking over the next 20 years, Social Security and Medicare will consume 2/3 of the federal budgets. Taxes will have to go way up to keep all those baby boomers in a comfortable retirement and pay for everything else.

    2. Re:Why those guys aren't retired anyway? by narcc · · Score: 1

      Just cut military spending. Considering that we spend more than the next 13 highest-spending nations combined, I think we could do with a reduction.

      --
      Required reading for internet skeptics
  17. Re:Promote longer life? Not so fast by sideslash · · Score: 1

    I'm guessing farmers who can afford water level sensors can also afford wading boots.

  18. Re:Promote longer life? Not so fast by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2

    Overzealous bureaucrats have their place. I'm more pissed off at the busybody who filed an anonymous complaint, ruining a good thing that benefited the neighbors.

  19. Re:Promote longer life? Not so fast by sideslash · · Score: 4, Informative

    I told my mom once about a recently deceased centenarian in the news who had boasted about eating chocolate every day. Mom retorted, "Well, if she didn't eat it, she might have lived even longer." Moral of the story: you can never win an argument with your mom.

  20. Re:Promote longer life? Not so fast by KGIII · · Score: 1

    WOOHOO!!! I'm going to live forever!

    --
    "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  21. Or a drone. by clovis · · Score: 1

    Well, that really does look cool, and one can see how it could be expanded to monitor other things.
    Their solution to power and networking also could be used for something like a webcam for increased flexibility.
    However, it looks like a variation of the "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" thought-process.

    If I were in the position of these farmers, I would prefer a drone to inspect the fields.
    With a human eyeball, you can spot the things that no one had thought would happen.
    A failed drone can be easily fixed by ordering another one, or you can two on hand.

  22. Re:Promote longer life? Not so fast by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    You may very well live longer. Are you planning to live longer? Most people aren't planning to live longer than their parents and they don't have the resources to live such a long life.

  23. subsidies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Fewer man-hours, more rice from less work, fewer farmers, less time spent working, less paid in wages, more produced, cheaper rice.

    The way to get cheaper rice is for Japan to ratify TPP, kick these farmers off the dole, and buy rice from Thailand or Louisiana for a tenth the price.

    Is this before or after the US stops subsidizing corn, cotton, wheat, and rice?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy#United_States

    Ditto for Thailand:
    * http://thediplomat.com/tag/thailand-rice-subsidies/
    * http://www.ibtimes.com/thailand-rice-subsidy-scheme-what-it-how-it-toppled-thai-leader-yingluck-shinawatra-1792788

    Perhaps the TPP should have looked at ending subsidies.

    Canada got/gets a lot of flak for its supply-side management scheme, which sets production quotas, but it's one of the few countries where the government doesn't directly write a cheque to farmers--which will change if the TPP passes. Prices are (supposedly) higher because of the quotas, but it's a system where the buyers of the product directly support the farmers as opposed to the general tax payer doing it regardless of whether they buy dairy/poultry.

  24. Re:Promote longer life? Not so fast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've worked with probably close to a dozen people who've died within a year of retirement. It's actually kinda joke. OTOH, every year of early retirement translates to an extra year of life past 65 according to the actuarial tables I've seen. (65r=66d, 64r=67d, 60r=70d, etc)

  25. Re:Promote longer life? Not so fast by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    My father retired at 59-1/2 years old. Mostly because his older brothers kicked the bucket after they turned 60. If he started his pension before he died at 60, my mother would have his pension for ten years. As it was, my mother died at 67 and my father died at 75.

  26. Re:Promote longer life? Not so fast by KGIII · · Score: 2

    I was very fortunate and sold my business after the growth and maturation of said business so I could, quite easily, fund a number of lives. In fact, with investing, I make more now than I ever did and I only invest as a hobby or have a financial manager who invests my real asset portfolio for me. I do pretty well at it, too. The funny part is that I haven't a clue what I'm doing. For instance, I bought 2000 shares of Tesla when they were 1/10 their current value. (I just spend a lot of time reading and looking for trends - people liked Tesla and so I bought a bunch.)

    So, yeah, I can. I don't really want to live too long and I surely don't want to live forever. I'm already a grouchy old man. I'd hate to see me in 100 years. It might be interesting but I'd expect I'd hate everything and everybody.

    --
    "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  27. Wrong idea by BitZtream · · Score: 0

    Did it ever occur to you fat fucks designing the sensor that the reason these 65-70 year old men are maintaining many rice paddies is BECAUSE they walk them, instead of sitting on their ass and withering away.

    This is one of those 'inventions' that sound like a good idea until you look outside your tiny ass little scope. It reminds me of the idiots who thought you could lock the Japs up in camps and feed them bleached white rice all the time and nothing else for nutrition instead of whole rice which is actually useful to the body unlike white rice

    You may make it easier on them, but end up with them dying younger instead! Not my idea of a good trade off considering walking isn't exactly bad for you. America needs to try less to be lazy, you're killing yourselves to do it.

    --
    Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
    1. Re:Wrong idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Did it ever occur to you fat fucks designing the sensor that the reason these 65-70 year old men are maintaining many rice paddies is BECAUSE they walk them, instead of sitting on their ass and withering away.

      Yes, it did.

      But it never occurs to you that any answer that a dumbass armchair scientist like you came up with on the fly was long ago considered and debunked/accounted for by the people who spend hundreds of hours thinking about the very problem you insist you've solved in the two seconds you were able to make yourself think about the subject before you couldn't stand it anymore and had to start slapping away at your keyboard.

    2. Re:Wrong idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is not about the poor old farmers and their aching hips and knees. This is about the fact that every rice paddy must be eyeballed several times a day to be sure it is not leaking, and if you're trying to make a living wage doing this in Japan today, that's a huge number of paddies. Now, throw in TPP and watch your income drop through the floor over the next few years, and what are you supposed to do? Get a day job? Then how do you monitor your fields?

      Just maybe, this project might have come about as the result of a real world need by someone who actually grows rice.

  28. Re:Promote longer life? Not so fast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Maybe it was a neighbor that didn't like his neighborhood junked up with rubbish from the operation?

  29. Re:Promote longer life? Not so fast by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    Like the neighbor dismantling three or four vending machines in his driveway each week? Or the neighbor building a new chicken coop in his driveway each week? None of those are in violation of county regulations. Separating metals and cleaning wood apparently was. Go figure.

  30. Re:Promote longer life? Not so fast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Japan's farmers are old because Japan is a segregated society. Farmers, fishermen, and other manual laborers who's professions are considered 'unclean' are a subclass heavily discriminated against. (Don't believe me? Remember that story about google pulling historic maps so people could not look up and see if your ancestors were in the wrong profession so you could be shitlisted)

    Nobody in their right fucking mind goes in to a profession like that so the youth don't replenish the workforce. It's literally better to be unemployed.

    So why not import a bunch of immigrant labor? Oops. Sorry.You forgot about Japan's other massive inequality problem: pervasive, endemic xenophobia and racism. No foreign laborers working the fields like in the US.

    Anyone else wonder why Japan's economy is spiraling in to the toilet? Why they've got an ultra-nationalist party on the rise? I sure don't.

  31. Re:Promote longer life? Not so fast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Bullshit. My grandparents on both sides were farmers, and their ancestors also for many generations back. They looked old and died young.

  32. Too complicated/expensive of a solution. by Khyber · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Toilets have held the answer for at least a century - float ball and fill valve. They don't require any specialized electronics, nor do they require power to run. Water levels get low enough, the float ball will trip the fill valve open and the paddy will get filled until the float ball raises up enough to close the fill valve.

    --
    Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    1. Re:Too complicated/expensive of a solution. by packrat0x · · Score: 1

      You're forgetting:
      "We've always done it this way".
      and
      "Tradition. Without our traditions, our lives would be as shaky as... as a fiddler on the roof!" -Tevye

      --
      227-3517
    2. Re:Too complicated/expensive of a solution. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What you are suggesting is the obvious solution (actually used quite a bit) to keeping water in a rice paddy when you have a constant flow of water into it. But what if you don't? What if you have to carry the water there in tanker trucks (a frequent problem with terraces - especially in a dry summer), or what if the water source is intermittent? What if there is a constant flow, but it is small, and you develop a leak in the rice paddy where the flow out exceeds the flow in? What if you can't afford the automated pumping system from that nearby river and you have to start the pump manually every time? A constant, ample water source is actually a luxury that many paddies don't have, paddies that are cultivated every year none the less. It is not a simple question of whether you have a ball tap.

      The solution to keeping a rice paddy full of water is to make it as watertight as you can, and then monitoring regularly, preferably several times per day. The way you make it watertight is complex and labor intensive, involving many steps and multiple tools and machinery. That investment in effort and fuel can be wasted if an un-monitored leak develops mid season, and the farmer is too busy to notice in time (leaks are frequent as are the range of potential causes - such as invasive crayfish that like to make tunnels in the mud). Paddies can drain out in hours if the leak is unnoticed, and a day or two dry can damage yield and boost weed growth. Most mid scale farmers tend more rice paddies than the number at which they would be able to maintain a uniform yield across them, and it is often not feasible to check the levels and conditions of all of them every day. You can even assess the priority of the given rice paddy in the farmer's mind based on how well tended it looks, and the range is striking, with the lowest priority paddies of even the most professional and skilled farmers looking like mangy dogs just before harvest. Yet they still work those paddies.

      Monitoring systems are not only useful to help quantify what actually happens over the course of a season or several seasons (producing immensely valuable data that greatly outweighs the cost of the devices while lowering the bar to entry into the world of rice growing - something I'm amazed the gainsayers completely fail to consider - science itself is predicated on collecting data and quantifying phenomena), but the time saved by eyeballing the field every few days instead of several times per day can be spent doing other things. It might ultimately translate to the ability for a single farmer to manage more fields, something the current Japanese government is, in a way, encouraging (specifically they want consolidation despite the real world topological limitations). That would even include, for some, working at a day job or other economic activities which is often a necessity considering that growing and selling rice often does not provide a livable wage on its own.

    3. Re:Too complicated/expensive of a solution. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ah but this is Japan, an electronic mecca. A float valve would be mechanical and have to be strategically placed. .A solar powered electronic device is not only easily replaced, but most importantly, can be put anywhere and give feedback while you're sitting on your couch. The toilet bowl method is nice, but this is japan where space is at a premium and cell phones aren't. Much more eloquent and functional. Zimbabwe, or tibet? Even china; use the float valve. Japan? Never.

    4. Re:Too complicated/expensive of a solution. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "The solution to keeping a rice paddy full of water is to make it as watertight as you can"

      Given the surface is exposed to open air - you can't make it watertight AT ALL.

    5. Re:Too complicated/expensive of a solution. by Khyber · · Score: 1

      ".A solar powered electronic device is not only easily replaced, but most importantly, can be put anywhere and give feedback while you're sitting on your couch"

      And very easily stolen, too.

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
  33. Re:Promote longer life? Not so fast by JanneM · · Score: 2

    Japan's farmers are old because Japan is a segregated society. Farmers, fishermen, and other manual laborers who's professions are considered 'unclean' are a subclass heavily discriminated against.

    No. You're confusing manual labour - well respected, fishermen and farmers especially - with "burakumin", the old class of people that did work forbidden by buddhism, such as butchering, leather tanning and so on.

    Discrimination of burakumin still exists, but mostly among the kind of people that worry their daughters will marry the "wrong sort" of people, and "wrong sort" also includes not having a foreigner in the family tree, not being a member of the right country clubs, having insufficient money and so on. The recent mayor of Osaka, for instance, is burakumin, but while there are many reasons to dislike him, I've heard of nobody doing so for that reason.

    --
    Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
  34. Re:Promote longer life? Not so fast by charrington · · Score: 1

    You are missing the point, though granted that is because the summary does not explain the full situation.

    This tech is not so the farmers will say healthy longer or live longer. Farmers in Japan are old. The reason they're still farming at age 70 for instance is because their sons, who traditionally would have taken over the farm years ago, have moved into the city to take an office job and are never coming back. Certainly some are glad to have something to do and will smile and tell you they plan on doing it until they're 100 years old.

    As the average age of farmers goes up, the amount of fallow land has also gone way up. They stop tending land in less ideal locations. Land that is harder to reach, where it is hard or impossible to get the tractor to, where the plot is on a slope - terraced and too small, land where it is more likely that wild animals can damage the crops because you're unable to monitor that field every day.

    The TechRice program will be expanded to measure other factors. The specific aim of the program is to make the tending of more remote/less ideal fields more viable, both in terms of labor and in terms of economics. It's an experiment to be sure, and the passing of TPP today raises the bar on what it would need to achieve. Personally my hope is that the program goes on to cover small scale affordable robotics (weeding, protection against wild life, etc.) but that is still just a pipe dream.

    Source: I'm one of the people who suggested the program.

  35. Re:Promote longer life? Not so fast by NormalVisual · · Score: 1

    Or a marked stick for each paddy, and a pair of binoculars.

    --
    Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
  36. It's over slashdot, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    One or two technology comments, 65 comments about social policy. Tonight I remove slashdot from my bookmarks.

    For the techs that remain behind, I work with sensors that use the same principles as TFA. Many different physical phenomenon (Ultrasound, RADAR, Time Domain Reflectometry...) are used to measure level of materials in factories, labs, water treatment plants and many other places

    State of the art is 77GHz RADAR, millimeter accurate to 100 meters:
    http://w3.siemens.com/mcms/sensor-systems/en/process-instrumentation/level-measurement-with-level-measuring-instruments/continuous/radar/pages/sitrans-lr560.aspx

  37. JAPS live to be 100+ all the time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    so 70 there is like 40 in the UK.

  38. Re:Promote longer life? Not so fast by volmtech · · Score: 1

    For some people farm work keeps them healthy. My father worked full time driving tractors until he was 80. I did not inherit those genes and by the time I turned 56 my rotator cuffs were both torn and a few hours of driving would leave me in tears. I also lost use of my left hand and had to take SS disability.

    I wouldn't trade glorious years of working outdoors for anything. I still live on the edge of one of fields I used to plow and it about kills me that I can't climb back in one of those big John Deere's when I watch them coursing back and forth.