Utility of Mobile Cultivation and Nighttime Root Zone Heating Cultivation that Encourages Participation by People with Intellectual Disabilities

Abstract

There are a variety of work processes in agriculture, and subdividing the work allows roles to be divided according to the characteristics of people with intellectual disabilities. Therefore, agriculture has great potential as a place of employment for people with disabilities. However, there are issues that some of the work involving planting and growing in the ground are difficult for them depending on the characteristics of their disability, and that the amount of work drastically declines during the winter season as plant growth slows down. In this study, after making culture media, sowing, and so forth at a conducive area for working with planters in a special-needs school, I attempted to solve the issues by “mobile cultivation” in which the planters are moved to the cultivation site, and by root area heating cultivation at night. The survey was conducted on two items. For the first item, the mobile cultivation was organized based on the agricultural work analysis table and was analyzed from the descriptions of the students’ work mode and the teacher’s interview data. For the second item, the planters were installed on heated mats in the mobile cultivation to simply perform the root area heating cultivation, and changes in soil temperature, electricity costs, and harvests were investigated. The results showed that the work difficulty level in the mobile cultivation is lower than that of the conventional method, and that the work is repetition of simple patterns, and thus all students could understand and implement the method. In addition, performing the root area heating through the mobile cultivation shortened the cultivation period for turnips and spinach, and yielded the equivalent or more harvests than the conventional method, and the electricity cost was approximately 25.8（turnip） and 15（spinach） yen per plant. These findings suggest the usefulness of the “mobile root area heating cultivation” for people with intellectual disabilities.