Japan's young farmers pin hopes on technology to revitalize agricultural industry

Hiroki Iwasa, a 40-year-old IT entrepreneur with an MBA, grows strawberries in seven high-tech greenhouses where computers set the temperature and humidity to optimal growing conditions and ensure the rows of bushes are sprayed with water at precise times. He markets his Migaki Ichigo-brand strawberries directly to fancy department stores in Tokyo, where they go for as much as ¥1,000 apiece, as well as to customers in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand, where Japanese produce has an excellent reputation. Such changes, while small, come as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pushes to reform the nation's hidebound farm industry, where small-plot holdings still dominate, the average farmer is over 66 years old and the sector's contribution to the economy has fallen by 25 percent since its peak in 1984. They should also make Japan more resilient if the United States tries -- as Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has hinted -- to pry open Japan's markets for rice and beef, which are protected by tariffs. Iwasa was running an IT company and working on an MBA in Tokyo when his coastal hometown of Yamamoto in Miyagi Prefecture, an area famous for strawberries, was hit by the March 2011 tsunami.