Journal of the Society of Agricultural Structures, Japan

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Although electricity and fuel are necessary for farm operation due to mechanization, there are few reports which investigated the quantity and the pattern of the electric power consumed at the farms. The farmers do not know the amount and tendency of the electricity consumption at their farms because they do not have the equipment to measure the amount of consumed electricity. Then, we showed how to simply grasp the power consumption for every work and for certain periods of time in a day by the “visualization of electric power consumption.” The farmers could know the amount of consumed electricity by writing down the types, numbers, and use frequency of machine operated at the farms. Furthermore, we measured the amount of consumed electricity at farms with the electric power analyzer which could measure the amount of consumed electricity. We investigated two dairy farms in Kanagawa prefecture. By putting the estimated amount of consumed electricity at each dairy farm into the form of diagram in accordance with the “visualization of electric power consumption,” the following matters could be confirmed: (1) the power consumption and use frequency of the machine, (2) the time frame of the maximum power consumption, (3) the estimated maximum power consumption, and (4) the tendency of power consumption on an hourly basis. Based on the comparison of the actual measured values with the estimated values of consumed electricity, the amount of estimated electricity consumption of the bulk cooler became more exact by applying the value of 15 % of its rated output. However, the continuous verification shall be examined.

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Measuring “chewiness” and “over a throat” enables us to evaluate an aspect of taste in an elastic food objectively. Today, some technologies to investigate the hardness and texture of a food physically are practically used. However, there is no effective method to observe distribution of hard and soft area inside an elastic food and a plastic food. Then, we proposed a new method to evaluate and visualize the distribution of hard and soft area inner both an elastic food and a plastic food, which is based on ultrasound image processing. We examined the performance of this method by two experiments: a computer simulation and a phantom experiment. As a result, although there is room for improvement on the proposed method, it was shown that this method can visualize the distribution of relatively hard and soft area inside a food as a two dimensional image.

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