Cultivate Area Required to Use New Technology about Sugar Beet from the Viewpoint of Operating Costs

Abstract

Crop cultivate farm in Hokkaido (except for paddies) have continued to their enlarge crop areas since 1960, particularly those for wheat. However, areas used to grow sugar beet have decreased. A lack of labor is currently a serious issue. Therefore, crop rotation may be reduced, resulting in crop damage due to diseases and insects, decreasing farm income. NARO have developed a “6 rows robot seedling planter” and “large 6 rows harvester” for sugar beet as a new technology that can enable crop rotation and increase farm income. Here, we compared operation costs between this new technology and current methods and determined the necessary crop area to operate the new technology. We found that for fi elds larger than 120 ha, the operational cost of the large 6 row harvester was lower than that of current methods. If the 6 row robot seedling planter can plant 1 ha in 2 h, it is 35-60, 70-120, and larger than 140 ha, the operational cost of the new planter will be lower than that of current planters. If this new planter can plant 1 ha per 2.5 h, planting only 35-45 ha will decrease operational costs compared to that of the current planter. Further, about a part of fi eld which farm cannot plant seedling because of lack of capacity of this new planter, farm plant directly it with seed instead of seedling.