D.I.Y. Artificial Intelligence Comes to a Japanese Family Farm

Not much about Makoto Koike's adult life suggests that he would be a farmer. Trained as an engineer, he spent most of his career in a busy urban section of Aichi Prefecture, Japan, near the headquarters of the Toyota Motor Corporation, writing software to control cars. Koike's longtime hobby is tinkering with electronic kits and machines; he is not naturally an outdoorsy type. Yet, in 2014, at the age of thirty-three, he left his job and city life to move to his parents' cucumber farm, in the greener prefecture of Shizuoka. "I thought I was getting old," Koike told me.