This research proposes an ad hoc wireless communication method that is appropriate for farm networks. We plan to apply this technology in an orchard. In this paper, we addressed farm networking requirements through an ad hoc network. We proposed a communication method that considered remaining battery charge and communication priority. In this proposed method, the wireless terminal provides service corresponding to the level of remaining battery charge. In addition, the terminal communicates by using a routing table corresponding to the level of remaining battery charge. When communication throughput decreases because of changes to the routing table, the terminal secures throughput by raising the priority of IEEE802.11e EDCA when transmitting. Priority is determined from the kind of the packet, the battery level, and the relay frequency to the destination terminal. This priority is dynamically changed according to the network situation. In this research, the QoS control function of IEEE802.11e is enhanced. A routing protocol widely used on ad hoc networks, AODV, was used in this research. The proposed method was implemented on a NS2 network simulator, and an evaluation experiment was conducted. The experimental result confirmed that the proposed method was effective.

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Information on recipes and the production history for agricultural and processed foods are stored on Web servers. A RF-ID (Radio Frequency Identification) system to transfer and display the information on a terminal at a store or a kitchen was developed. Recipes, or necessary information on agricultural products or processed foods are displayed instantaneously on a terminal when a recipe card or a product containing a mu-tip inlet or an IC tag is held over the tag reader. A survey for the display or IC tag terminal was conducted through questionnaires. This survey involved ca. 500 persons (both male and female) who were given a demonstration of the system at a model home kitchen. Analysis of the results yielded a report of the feasibility and limitations of the information system. Furthermore, it provided guidelines for improvement and utilization of the system.

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The purpose of our study was to develop an outreach tool that makes research known to the public. We compared and evaluated three Web-based models featuring the breeding of `Minaminokaori,' a bread wheat. The first model is an interactive communication system that uses the Web and an electronic bulletin board. The second combines the first model with the experience of people who actually use `Minaminokaori' wheat in bread making. The third combines the other two models with direct communication with researchers. The test participants were women in their 30s to 40s. The effectiveness of the three models was evaluated from the viewpoints of knowledge level, interest, attitude, and action. No difference among the models was found in enhancing knowledge level. The third model, which incorporated experience and direct communication, promoted greater interest in the research and a more favorable attitude toward the research activities. The third model encouraged participants to pass on their learning experiences to their neighbors. Thus, combining a Web-based interactive communication system, experience of using new plant breeds, and direct communication with researchers can increase the public's interest in breeding research and can effectively spread information on new plant varieties.

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In recent years, digital still cameras have come to be widely used. This study provides an example of the use of digital still cameras for agriculture. Five students observed establishment images of direct-seeded paddy rice on the display unit of a personal computer, and the number of seedlings was measured. Image features that affected the measurement error rate and the measurement time were examined by statistical analyses. In this study the following image features were identified as potentially significant: image resolution; the number of seedlings; the reflection of seedlings from the water surface; and the overlap of seedlings. In 86.8% of the visual measurements the number of seedlings measured was fewer than the actual number. Male students, in particular, tended to underestimate the number of seedlings. Using the stepwise method to analyze the data revealed that image resolution, the number of seedlings, and the overlap of seedlings influence the measurement error rate. It was estimated that the measurement error rate became 4.7-13.0% when the number of seedlings was 40-70/m ² , the recommended plant density at transplanting for Ishikawa Prefecture. It was considered that number of seedlings and reflections of the seedling from the surface of the paddy water influenced the measurement time. Moreover, there were no correlations between the measurement time and the measurement error rate.

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The realms of this research include the study of decision-making methods over management policy to help draw management plans, the basic study of farm management planning, and the development of software to be used for decision-making and management-planning. However, this report focuses on the results of management policy decision-making using a text-mining system. This research, based on bookkeeping and farming data, presents a few charts of summarized management analysis that help to explain current management conditions as well as improving farm management as a whole. Farmers input information on the present state of management including the problems and solutions based on a management analysis summary. In this regard, standardized natural-language sentences can be used. The free sentences are processed into simple sentences so that statistics can be derived smoothly in a text-mining system using Morphological Analysis and Japanese Dependency Analysis. By cross-totaling the simplified sentences, major factors can be identified in the following categories: the present state of management, problems and solutions. Furthermore important sentences, chosen out of the simplified sentences to be the factors of solutions, were regarded as alternative solutions. After the evaluations were categorized as revenue, technology, labor or progress, the weighting of alternative solutions was calculated in the AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) system. In this way management policies in the resulting management plan were ranked in priority order.

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A web-based system for sharing and integration of crop data and weather data called CROWIS was developed to allow users upload their experimental data and download the merged and integrated data in spreadsheet format. The system was designed based on a hybrid of MVC (Model, View and Controller) and SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) design pattern and composed of a web application and three services of MetBroker, Google Maps and Rice Data Service. User can upload crop data in spreadsheet format, and then these data are merged with data from other locations in the database. Crop data can be queried from Rice Data Service and be integrated with weather data by way of MetBroker based on specified locations and then be downloaded as a spreadsheet file. By using Google Maps service, user can register the latitude and longitude information of a new location. Successful uploading of 37 spreadsheet rice data files indicated that the upload and merging function of CROWIS is operational. A total of 184 rice properties of 151072 records containing information of 6486 different varieties and lines collected from 256 different experiment locations from 1980 to 2004 had been stored in rice database. The results of various combinations of rice data queries and data integrations with weather data indicated that CROWIS is robust and stable enough for users to download merged rice data and/or integrated data files. With this system, people in experimental fields can easily share and integrate their most recent and valuable experimental data sets. Researchers and modelers can easily obtain the merged and integrated data. These data are helpful to test and verify existing models, improve parameter estimations and simplify construction of new models. The system is accessible at http://www.agmodel.org/CROWIS/

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The purpose of this research is to clarify the opportunities and challenges that RFID tags provide for future automatic farming operation recognition systems. An experimental system has been developed and a basic examination of the system has been done. The effectiveness of the method of recognizing farming was verified and an operational test of the system was carried out. The system reads RFID data attached to agricultural implements, machinery, facilities, materials, etc. with a reader worn by the worker. The kind and the content of farming labor is inferred from the kinds of objects that the worker is in contact with.
The system supports two kinds of RFID tag: 2.45 GHz and 13.56 MHz.
We confirmed that it was possible to recognize the content of farming labor from the RFID history data. Moreover, we identified five research topics for the further development of a practical recognition system. Examples of these topics include: clarification of the effect on agricultural production and management of introducing the system, and the development of wearable type readers & high accuracy sensors.

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This paper aims to develop a MS Excel macro program for the statistical analysis of choice experiment data. Estimation results from a conditional logit model are obtained by inputting the choice experiment's choice sets and responses into separate sheets of an MS Excel workbook, and executing the macro program. This macro program has several advantages in comparison with an earlier MS Excel program. First, it can be used to analyze choice experiment questions that have up to 6 possible alternatives. Second, since it automatically generates a data set for the conditional logit model from the input data, the time taken to input the data set suited to the model and the probability of mistakes in inputting data are reduced. Finally, it can calculate goodness-of-fit measures as well as the t-value and p-value of each estimated coefficient. However, the results of the macro program differ slightly from those of econometric software packages used widely in previous papers where choice experiments were applied. The users of the macro program have to be alert to possible calculation errors.

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In this paper, we examined consumers' valuation of good agricultural practice (GAP), using a payment card contingent valuation method (CVM) and a contingent ranking method (CRM). A questionnaire survey was conducted in Sendai city, Miyagi prefecture, Japan. Responses from 200 participants were analyzed to measure the marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) for GAP in the case of tomatoes produced in Miyagi prefecture. The MWTP estimated from the CVM and CRM was 12.5 yen and 9.9 yen a piece, respectively. The MWTP for GAP estimated from the CRM in the case of tomatoes produced in Kumamoto was 9.5 yen, which was almost equal to the MWTP for GAP in the case of the tomatoes produced in Miyagi. This result leads us to the conclusion that regardless of place of origin, the MWTP for GAP seems to be approximately 10 yen a piece. The CRM was also used to explore the effects of respondents' characteristics on their valuation of GAP, based on 181 respondents. The respondents' sex and age influenced their valuation of GAP in the case of both Miyagi and Kumamoto. While the respondents who had a tendency to purchase agricultural products produced in Miyagi increased their valuation of GAP for Miyagi, those who purchased tomatoes almost every day decreased their valuation of GAP for Kumamoto.

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A Rural Energy Simulator was created using Microsoft Excel® and Microsoft Visio® with Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) in order to analyze some competitive production scenarios between food and renewable energy in rural areas. This linear programming simulator is able to derive an optimum solution from objective functions such as maximizing renewable energy production, or minimizing cropping surface area in rural areas with constraint conditions such as farmland surface area, food demand, feed demand, and energy demand.
The simulator was evaluated by comparing trial calculated data published in previous research papers on the estimation of biomass production. It was clarified that cropping systems in the rural agricultural area of Tochigi prefecture can be identified with enough accuracy for discussion by using the simulator, considering the real data and restricted conditions used in the previous research papers. Furthermore, some trial calculations for new scenarios were executed by using the simulator from the viewpoint of increasing the amount of production in food and energy along with effective use of rural agricultural areas in order to promote the construction of a self-sufficient society. The simulator automatically selected the best cropping system for a high energy conversion efficiency from many cropping combination patterns. The simulator identified some solutions for self-sufficiency in food in rural area with maximized biomass energy production and farmland utilization ratio, and minimized cropping surface area.

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Prefectural standards for agricultural pest control (PSAPC) provide important information for operational pest management. The negative impact of erroneous PSAPC is potentially very large. The right PSAPC require considerable labor. Therefore, this paper proposes a method of making PSAPC by using Nouyaku-Navi (Navigation system for appropriate pesticide use). The crop name and the product's active ingredient are specified. The input data is assessed by the Nouyaku-Navi judgment server. It is possible to extract all the pesticides of the same group from different manufacturers by specifying the active ingredient. The system handles the different pesticide use rules of each product. When a judgment result is appropriate, the result is stored in XML format. An appropriate XSL stylesheet is applied to this XML file, which results in information being displayed in almost the same style as PSAPC. The results formatted with the stylesheets can be used as a manuscript or as confirmation material for PSAPC. It was clarified that the support system was effective for making PSAPC promptly and correctly.

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Pollinated flowers, which exist randomly among Gentiana Sp. cut flowers, are the main cause of decreased market values. Because such flowers often arrive at market with their color changed to copper from its original color, there is a very high risk that the value of the whole bunch is diminished. For this reason it is necessary to remove pollinated flowers in the interval between harvest and shipment. Currently most farmers manually carry out this laborious process, and often not all of the pollinated flowers are detected and removed. In `Ashiro no natsu', which is the leading Gentiana sp. variety in Iwate prefecture, the visible difference between a young flower and a flower which has just been pollinated in the field is so subtle that removal of the pollinated flower is extremely difficult. On the other hand, even in this variety, a few skillful farmers can detect pollinated flowers with careful inspection. However, to spread their skill, it is necessary to objectively elucidate their technique for making the distinction. In this study targeting `Ashiro no natsu, Gentiana sp.', spectral radiance differences between young flowers and pollinated flowers on the outer surface of petals was examined closely with a simple measuring device over wavelengths ranging from visible to infrared. A significant difference was identified at wave lengths in the neighborhood of 720 nm. Thus, in the near future it will be possible to develop an early detection device for pollinated flowers using inexpensive digital photography because CCD, the image sensor used in most commercial video cameras, is sensitive to this wave length.

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A practical farm work planning is important for agricultural production corporations to manage the farming work systematically and efficiently. Since the farm work planning corresponds to a NP hard scheduling problem, a satisfactory and rational farm work planning is difficult to be generated by conventional approaches. This paper proposes a new concept of applying the Petri net and simulated annealing (SA) algorithm to develop a farm work planning for the agricultural production corporations. The necessary data for farm work planning including the data of farming process and changes of uncertainties is recorded by a cellular phone equipped with a GPS (Global Positioning System) function and an Internet connection. Petri net mathematically and graphically describes the farming process, and simulates the farming activation and resource allocation. The marking that is one of properties of Petri net facilitates mastering the farming progress and the online status of the farmland and resources. According to the formulation of farming process, we developed the SA algorithm to obtain high-quality solutions approximated to the optimum solution for the farm work planning. In the experimental evaluation on the simulation data between the SA algorithm and conventional local search algorithm, the scheduled length by the SA algorithm was much shorter than that by the local search algorithm. The result revealed that the SA algorithm had high superiority to generate high-quality solution for the farm work planning.

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