A tractor mounted variable rate herbicide applicator with an 800 mm width of application was developed for spraying herbicides in a sugarcane field with a row spacing of 1,500 mm. The system components included a web camera to capture picture of field entries, a ground speed sensor, a PWM circuit to control a 12-volt DC electrical pump and application software that was programmed by Borland C++ builder for processing and controlling the system. The applicator was tested in constant application mode and the variable rate mode. It was observed that working speed, field capacity, field efficiency during constant application mode was higher than that its use as a variable rate applicator. The amount of herbicide used depended on application rate, working speed and field capacity. Application rate with the constant application system was maximum e.g. 2.78 L/min or 407.07 L/ha at 0.41 ha/h field capacity and 1.13 m/s working speed. With a variable rate system, at 0.33 ha/h field capacity and 0.77 m/s working speed, the application rates were varied to 2.00, 1.90, 1.80, 1.70 and 1.60 L/min. At these application rates, herbicide use was 363.64, 345.45, 327.27, 309.09 and 290.91 L/ha, thus herbicide saving, compared to constant application system, was 10.67, 15.14, 19.6, 24.07 and 28.54% respectively. As the working speed of the variable application rate system was slower than constant application system, it affected to field capacity and field efficiency but its less use of herbicide was not only economical but good for reducing harmful effects on the environment. An economic analysis conducted showed the area required for breakeven is 81.86 ha.

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The Japanese Crested Ibis, Nipponia nippon, known as toki in Japan, remains critically endangered because of habitat loss and increased pesticide use by farmers. A number of projects at Sado seeks to provide a suitable habitat for the development of a wild population of Ibis by encouraging a particular form of low fertilizer/low agrichemical rice cultivation. The rice from these projects is marketed as " Toki Hikari " (Koshihikari is a popular rice variety in Japan). Our study evaluates the extent to which consumers are prepared to pay for the rice produced as part of such conservation efforts.We adopted the dichotomous alternative Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) to estimate the value that consumers would place on such rice. In this study, we determined that the average intention of payment of consumer for Toki Hikari rice was 8,093 yen per 10 Kg. We also proved that the balance between the average price of payable intention and the price of Toki-Hikari rice was small, 574 yen.
We were able to show that under the current marketing conditions for Toki-Hikari rice and for increasing the consumption of such rice, some conditions other than the price were needed. And also, it was cleared through this study that the price gap between Toki Hikari rice and other rice, which was estimated at almost 6,032 yen per 10 Kg, would become 2,061 yen per 10 Kg. This price gap means that the rice produced as part of establishing a habitat for Japanese Ibis will be able to marketed at a higher price than other rice.

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Modern technologies such as Geographical Information System (GIS) would be advantageous in land suitability analysis. Distributing geospatial information on the internet is an enforcing factor for information providers. Web-based GIS technologies can be promoted to share geospatial data with farming community, plantation sector, and academic community and also it helps to make the best decision with the available information on growing crops. This concept can be successfully applied to web-based online consulting system for crop-land suitability. The purpose of this study is to develop an interactive web-based GIS online consulting system with crop-land suitability analysis, which provides information on tomato and cabbage cultivation in Kandy, Matale, Nuwaraeliya and Badulla districts of Sri Lanka. Analysis of topography factor, soil properties, and climatic factors were considered as important criteria to determine crop-land suitability. Maps for each criteria and district map of Sri Lanka were digitized by using the ArcView 9.1. District layer map of Sri Lanka was used to get the study area map. Study area map was utilized to create each spatial characteristics layers (soil, topography, rain fall, temperature, land use). Feature layers were converted to raster format. Raster layers and crop requirement factors were analyzed by GIS spatial analysis tools. Suitability maps were created under four suitability criteria, that is, highly, moderately, marginally, and not suitable. Combination of ASP, VB Script, SQL, GIS, DBMS, Map Server, and Web Server component were used to develop a flexible and user friendly online crop consultation system with web-GIS tools. System facilitates to query out click area of the suitable map, would display information on the district name, suitability rank, suitability category, suitable land area, current vegetation and statistics data. This system also provides documentary consultation from field to marketing.

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An inventory analysis method was carried out to estimate the direct and indirect energy consumption of mechanized rice production system using the database of inter-industry relations table. The specific energy consumption of the rice production process was calculated by taking into account the life span and operating time of agricultural machineries. The total direct and indirect energy consumption of 22,621 MJ/ha and 62.8% of total direct energy, respectively for Utsunomiya University farm (area: 7.2 ha, yield: 4,650 kg/ha, 2001) was calculated as the standard example of inventory analysis for rice production system. The application of chemical fertilizer and agricultural machinery operation also resulted in large indirect energy consumption during the production process. The possibility of reducing energy use for agricultural machineries, material in production process, and low-input rice farming in the university farm while sustaining rice yields were analyzed by comparing the data from other paddy fields with conventional cultivation practices, and from previous published data. Adoption of rice production technology that reduces operating time for cultivation, paddling, planting, harvesting, drying, as well as reducing chemical fertilizer application by using organic fertilizer, are the primary factors in increasing the energy efficiency (output/input) of rice production. Furthermore, the importance of utilizing heat from burning of rice, chaff, and straw produced by rice cropping system was emphasized because of the lower output/input energy ratio (1.47 or less ) of ethanol fuel-based rice production system compared to other energy utilization of biomass.

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A planning model of renewable energy adoption for rural area using AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) application was developed to evaluate the possibility of adopting proposed scenarios for Utsunomiya city, Tochigi, Japan based on trial calculations. The priority of the scenario "Supporting for Initial Cost of Photovoltaic Equipment (Supported by local government)" was affected by the improvement of cost and life span of photovoltaic equipment. On the other hand, the priority of the scenario "Supporting for Buying and Selling (Supported by general consumer)" was affected by modifying the rate of electricity buying to adopt the characteristics of local area having agreement that residents and firms have to pay 1% of total electricity cost to the local government. Large expenses by the local government and residents were needed to carry out the scenario "Bio-industry Investment for Renewable Energy Plant as Public Utilities (Supported by local government)", which has high performance of renewable energy production and reduction of CO₂.
The AHP model was developed by using evaluation items and alternatives based on the proposed scenarios. Discussion and evaluation of sensitivity analysis for the AHP model showed that the evaluation items "citizen's eagerness for participation" and "entrepreneur's eagerness for participation" were affected by the precedent plan, visible result, or direct connection to the residents. The weight of evaluation item "unreliability for technology" was influenced by example of adoption, effect of the plan, and existing plan. Hence, the scenario "Bio-industry Investment for Renewable Energy Plant as Public Utilities (Supported by local government)" should be adopted as the primary alternative to reduce the expenses of the local government and promote citizen and entrepreneur's eagerness for participation.

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Semantic resources have been developed for effective searching of agricultural information. This paper outlines these resource. In 2002, we translated about 27,300 terms of AGROVOC into Japanese. AGROVOC is a multilingual thesaurus covering all of the fields in Agriculture, Forestry, Fisheries and related domains, which was developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Commission of the European Communities. This Japanese agricultural thesaurus has been developed as an addition to AGROVOC, because there are only a few Japan-specific agricultural terms available in AGROVOC. The Japan agricultural thesaurus contains of about 35,000 terms written in English, Japanese and hiragana. It has both equivalence and broader/ narrower term relationships between terms. A morpheme dictionary has been developed based on the Japan agricultural thesaurus for analyzing morphemes of an input sentence. The dictionary consists of terms written in Japanese and hiragana, and information on the fluctuation of the description.

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