For the purpose of safety, it is important to prevent tractor accidents, which are the most common fatal agricultural machine accidents. In this study, the probability of a tractor accident and the severity of injury were quantified from the results of a tractor accident survey. The risk of each accident cases and the factors involved were quantified based on the probability and the severity of injury. The results show that the risk of death and serious injury can be reduced by approximately 57 % and 61 %, respectively. Furthermore, the risk of an accident is expected to be lower than the threshold of death and serious injury by addressing three factors: unsafe and poor machine operability, road inclination, and narrow roads.

In recent years, the Japanese government has encouraged soybean planting. However, the suitable seeding period is only for 2 weeks, and more than 80 % of soybean fields are converted from rice paddy. The purpose of this study was to improve existing seeding techniques for rapid and stable seeding of soybean in moist soil conditions. A machine that combines rotary cultivation, ridging, and seeding has previously been developed. However, operation speeds were as slow as 0.3-0.6 m/s, and seeding was not effective in the moist soil conditions. In this study, we tested an experimental machine with disk cultivation that achieved a maximum ridging speed of 2 m/s and a new, high seeding speed of 1.5 m/s, which ensured stable seeding.

The cost of damage to agricultural crops caused by birds has been increasing year after year. Covering the entire space above an agricultural field, such as an orchard, with nets or wires would require enormous expense for installation and maintenance. Although threatening countermeasures can be manually undertaken using devices such as pyrotechnics, such activities do not have persistent effects and the damages can be repeated when not monitored. In particular, preventing damages by constantly monitoring for pest birds, such as crows, is difficult. In this study, we install fixed monitoring cameras for incoming prevention of birds. Then, the drone takes off and hovers around the area of detection to expel birds. We developed a test drone and conducted tests at a vineyard to evaluate the system. By making the drone autonomously fly around, we got the result that from 3 to 11 flying birds, especially Corvus corone, flew from 0 to 3 birds.