If you say agricultural crops, everyone in Japan imagines rice or vegetables, but most crops that are actually cultivated in the world are not “in the form of crops” but on the table. For example, all of the raw materials such as alcohols, food oil, seasoning, meat etc. are all agricultural crops. So, such crops never go directly from farmers to consumers.
Many of you in Japan may imagine rice or vegetables as agricultural crops but most of the crops grown around the world are on your tables in a “different form”. Alcohol, oils, seasonings, meat are agricultural crops processed to a different form. Most of these raw ingredients will not be sold directly to the consumers.

You wouldn’t want farmers sending you soybean to your home to extract oil, would you?

Well, even now we have about 3.6 billion hectares of agricultural land which is used to grow raw material crops for raising livestock, this seems to be larger than the continent of Africa. The agricultural land area totaling all rice paddies and fields in Japan is 4.65 million hectares, which is 1/774 of the total area in the world. Furthermore, it seems that the agricultural land area that cultivates rice, corn, soybean, wheat and other crops is 1.78 billion hectares which is about the same area as the South American continent, either way it is hard to grasp the whole image because the scale is too big.

【Reference source】
To what extent can the earth cope with the increasing population around the world?
http://gigazine.net/news/20160428-how-many-people-can-earth-hold/

Well, in fact, the crops grown in such large area are mostly in the black box and the reality of the distribution channel, actual conditions of cultivated farms and the information of farmers itself are in fact not well understood. Of course, statistical data exists, but in reality, there is a complicated and confused interest of relationship between the cultivated farmer to the end market. The information on the type and quantity of the fertilizer or pesticide used is not clear. What I know clearly is that people who are entering each village usually as a “broker” are playing many roles to cash profit little by little before the crops reach the end market such as processing factories or distribution, in some cases this only serves to lower the quality of the product.
In addition, these brokers loan money to farmers who are lacking cash in the name of “supporting” the farmers, they then purchase the crops cheaper than market value to offset the interest rate, or by extending the payment cycle of the purchased crop and make a composition that the farmers cannot escape from debt by deteriorating their cash flow. I am not saying that some of the middlemen are bad guys, but the structure of the society has been built around this, so it will not change easily. However, even people who live in remote areas of the world can now directly express their situation using the internet or smartphones, and we can see signs that such social structural problems can be destroyed.

At an agricultural venture, the concept of “Farm to table” which connects the farmers with the consumer tend to draw attention. But at AGRIBUDDY we aim to connect the farmers to the food processing factories, the new concept of “Farm to Factory” and we hope to collect and provide realistic data of the farmers, this is something no one has obtained.

Anyway, I would like to announce some news towards our next step shortly, keep posted!

I myself am a struggling sea turtle too I guess in the sense that I started business in Cambodia and now that our business is spreading into Asia and the world mainly in developing countries, by providing various services of AGRIBUDDY. Most importantly, Mr. Kato has been a great supporter in our business providing us manpower, goods and capital, and I must mention his presence through some of the factors written in this book.

Although I can’t write much in detail that reveals the content of the book, the first part of the book starts where Mr. Kato started a business with his seniors during his university years, they had great success but right after he graduated from university, the rules in that business sector changed dramatically and their company went bankrupt, this is a true episode of “entrepreneurship equals risk”, and he talks about the troubles he went through after that. A normal guy may have given up there, regret his decisions to start a company and wondered if things would have changed if he had found employment like a normal person.
Most people in the world believe that it is impossible to restart if they failed in business, and after failure a life with lower standards is waiting. However, that may be a total misunderstanding.

Thankfully, I have had many opportunities to interact with these people who experienced “student entrepreneurship, then bankruptcy” along with Mr. Kato, but every one of them are now a president or an executive of a listed company or running their own successful business, they are a group of talented people who have all succeeded in what they are doing. I always wonder if their revival is because “they were all a group of talented people that started business together at the right time and place or is it because they experienced such failure at an earlier stage?”, I have also asked some of them this question directly but I am pretty confident that the answer probably is the latter. There isn’t a professional boxer who has never had a punch in the gut, a professional skier who has never fallen to the ground or a professional driver who has never been in an accident . Business may be the same thing. And the younger you are, the wound is shallower and will heal faster. This is probably the greatest purpose for Mr. Kato to actively interact with young people.
I have had a lot of opportunities to visit investors with Mr. Kato for the fundraising of AGRIBUDDY, but he always ends up with a terribly tight schedule. Actually, it’s so tight that the two of us had to run through the station to catch the next train on several occasions. Well, I had no choice but to run because Mr. Kato was running, but if I were as famous as he was, I would probably make the opponent wait. While this honesty is also one of Mr. Kato’s charms, I noticed him meeting strangers who had contacted him online in a tiny slot of time he had to spare giving them serious lifetime advice.
Perhaps many of you know, but Mr. Kato is a frequent poster on Twitter and Facebook. And in between all those posts, he is meeting someone all the time. Nevertheless, I get replies from him almost instantly. When he doesn’t reply instantly, he is probably up in the sky in a flight and can’t reply even if he wanted to. (lol)
It is not once or twice that he stayed up very late with me talking about our business plan. Even though he is such a busy man, he still finds the time to meet young strangers and talk to them. Actually, I am also one of the “former” strangers who got in contact with him through Twitter. I wasn’t young though… And that triggered him to invest in our business and overcame so many obstacles with us, he gave us the opportunity to realize the idea of AGRIBUDDY, eventually he gave us so many suggestions to commercialize the concept of AGRIBUDDY, and here we are.
Mr. Kato is a busy man and my comments may drive him mad, but I urge young people to get in touch with him. You should first read his book, and if that moves you, take a chance and try and meet him. Try and create an opportunity to meet him in person and talk to him one on one. You will never find anyone so funny, foolishly honest and someone who works hard to motivate young people.

Rice grain prices in Cambodia are dropping. The farmer’s selling price was about 250 USD/ton (25,000 yen), but it fell to about 190 USD (19,000 yen)/ton, and the rice farmers are facing difficulties.
（The article is in English）
https://www.cambodiadaily.com/archives/farmers-block-road-amid-rice-price-crisis-118145/air

So why is the price dropping so rapidly? That is because the rice millers cannot buy rice. I mean “they can’t afford to buy rice”, this is today’s important topic.

In the first place, Cambodia is not a “country where people in poverty are in hunger” against what might be the majority of image that Japanese have toward Cambodia, no matter how poor people are, they still can afford to eat. Especially with rice, even the extremely poor people in world standards who live on less than 2 USD a day can afford to eat rice and give leftovers to chickens or dogs. Exporting the excess rice to earn foreign currency is one of the major projects that kept the nation growing, so when you hear Japanese volunteering organizations or school students donating rice to Cambodia, it doesn’t really make any sense and I would call it harassment, but I am going to keep that topic aside.

In Cambodia, there is a fragrant rice called Rumduol that has won gold medals for three consecutive years at the World Rice Conference, although they have strong rivals such as Thailand and Vietnam in the neighborhood, with the preferential tariffs for developing countries, they have had plenty of orders from EU. Although the yearly export amount is only half of what the government has aimed for (one million tons per year), they are not in a position of facing difficulties in the international market. But why is there such a phenomenon? Why is the rice grain price dropping rapidly?

It is only recently that decent quality rice polishing plants were introduced to Cambodia. To build a rice milling plant compatible with international standards, it was necessary to invest millions of dollars before we were ready to export rice. In addition, we need a decent stock plant to store the rice grain that was collected from the farmers and that costs near one billion yen. So, the government got funding through IFC (International Finance Corporation) and World Bank, several aids from foreign countries, and various other methods, decided to loan the facilities to local influential people. Everything should have worked out with this plan.

However, a lot of the cash (other than what was used to construct the facilities) that many of the rice millers gained vanished into thin air, spent on expensive cars and watches or property investment and luxurious parties, that money was supposed to be spent on buying rice grain from the farmers. And as a result, the stock plant stays empty and the fully equipped rice milling facilities are running at such a slow rate that it is not sustainable, probably resulting in a default for many.

I constantly insist that financing is the key to raise the income of farmers in developing countries to a manageable level. Money is a lubricant for every economic activity. However, it is also true that giving cash can sometimes result in tragedy, so we must create a system of financing without giving them cash. This is one of the issues that AGRIBUDDY is trying to overcome.

Just as I have stated in the title, at AGRIBUDDY, we have an in-house programing engineer who produces unique apps for AGRIBUDDY, and analyze data that we gather, we definitely are an IT company. We asked one of our top engineers, Mr. Ojima to come for a business trip so he can communicate directly with the users for improvement of the project. Actually, it came to my mind during a video chat we were having, and I suggested to him to come to Cambodia from tomorrow. Well, Asia is indeed not too far away.

We always travel to meet our users, but as you can imagine, most of our users do not live in town or urban areas, so we sometimes have unexpected things to deal with.

This truck has done over 120,000km but over half of it is on rough off road conditions just like in this photo. Toyota cars are definitely amazing.

After the rain, the road (or shall we call it a trail?) is muddy, and the mud gets stuck in between the grooves of the tires.

Because we are in full power 4WD trying to get out of this mud, you can imagine the car is covered in mud in no time.

So, after all this and going through some lane which cannot be called a road…
Mmm…where has the road disappeared to??

On July 6th, I attended a symposium (The Project for Development and Dissemination of Sustainable Production System Based on Invasive Pest Management of Cassava in Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand) as an observer from the private enterprise sector at Battambang University.

This is one of the joint projects between JICA and JST’s “Science and Technology Research Partnership for Sustainable Development, or SATREPS”, Professor Takasu taking the lead and experts from institutes such as Nagoya university, Tokyo university, Tokyo Agricultural university, Institute of Physical and Chemical Research, CIAT of Columbia gathers to discuss majors we can take to stop the spread of diseases caused by cassava worldwide.
http://www.jst.go.jp/global/kadai/h2708_vietnam.html

I was invited to the last kick off meeting which was held in Hanoi, where an honorable decision was made to use AGRIBUDDY as a monitoring institute or testing the spread of diseases in cassava and the growth of healthy seedlings. At this meeting, we had to make a presentation on how AGRIBUDDY can be of use to the project, such as the majors of monitoring to the farmers and the data we are able to collect etc. Our COO, Brandon joined the meeting with me on this occasion.

The thing that AGRIBUDDY is most proud of is that it we are connected online with the farmers living in remote areas, some of them who we have never met before and that we can contact them at any time. So, even in situations where the researchers have limited opportunities to go to the site, it is possible to acquire raw data from the farmers directly online.
And it is also possible to return results obtained by experts to analyze the gathered data and to give advice to farmers directly. This way, the wisdom of Japan is utilized to raise the productivity of farmers in remote areas that have relied on unfounded countermeasures until now, by being able to interact with “expert advice” directly. I hope such wisdom from Japan will be utilized to raise productivity in the remote areas in the future too.
Before the symposium, the members of SATREPS celebrated us for the award we received at NIKKEI Fintech.

“Although we decided to plan a celebration, it was really difficult to find a cake in Battambang (a rural town of Cambodia)” said one of the members, “They tried to write Happy Birthday, so the cake is a little messy…” he said as he opened the box.

Oh Cambodia, you never betray my expectations…
To everyone at SATREPS, thank you for the heartwarming celebration. We will work hard as a team so AGRIBUDDY can bring your project success. Thank you for your continuous support.

I just got back from a fruitful business trip to Japan and got a little rest, time to update my blog I guess. On this trip, I was able to go to my home town Osaka for one night and met several people I wanted to meet for ages. One of them was a guy who is the same age as my father that has kept an eye out for me since when I was in my twenties, he hadn’t changed a bit and still lived his life enjoying every bit of it and I was relieved to see him happy and well. Since I have been living in a place which is going through so many changes constantly, it was great to be in an environment that hasn’t changed a bit in twenty years and people will welcome me after my long absence.

After a rather sentimental stay in Osaka, I met some interesting people in Tokyo, along with a presentation I had to give for AGRIBUDDY’s next step. One of the encounters I had was through Mr. Shigeta, who is the author of several books relating to business in India and who is a pilotage for the business advance of AGRIBUDDY in India. “There is a NIKKEI Fintech event on June 24^th and they are hosting a start-up pitch battle, are you interested in joining?”, Mr. Shigeta contacted me with some interesting news.

I had just purchased a ticket back from Tokyo which was due to leave in the morning of the 24^th, but this was an opportunity I could not miss, I decided to stay for one more night and cancelled my ticket from Tokyo. Actually, I noticed after getting back to the hotel on the day of the event that I had forgotten to change my flight…

Prior to the event, one of the pitch battle moderators, Mr. Ohira of Tohmatsu Venture Support had gone through my presentation and gave me some advice on how to finish the presentation within 7 minutes, thanks to that I was able to give a good presentation and expressed the minimum scope of AGRIBUDDY’s business and received excellent feedback from the judges.

As soon as I got off the stage, Mr. Haruta sent me a photo of myself on stage (see below) along with a message, “Congratulations on receiving an award at NIKKEI Fintech!”.

As I hadn’t got a single photo from the event, I was quite surprised at the speed and his network.

Here are some articles about the event.

http://thebridge.jp/2016/06/nikkei-fintech-conference-2016-fintech-startups

http://itpro.nikkeibp.co.jp/atcl/column/14/346926/062700559/?ST=fintech&P=1

Maskin of Techwave had interviewed us last month and also written a great article.

http://techwave.jp/archives/agribuddy-22001.html

Very professionally written and his explanation of our business is spot on, when someone asks me about AGRIBUDDY in the future, I will use this article to save me time.

Mr. Kato who has been supporting and investing in our business ever since the days of HUGS Agtech (agricultural plantation business in Cambodia) has also written a blog about the award.

http://katou.jp/?day=20160627

Mr. Kato was the one who brought Mr. Haranaga (now CTO) to Cambodia when I first talked about AGRIBUDDY’s idea, the suggestion to spin off AGRIBUDDY’s business concept from HUGS Agtech, introducing me to Mr. Shigeta who was the one to invite me to NIKKEI Fintech, all a great model of hands on investment by Mr. Kato.

Come to think about it, I am very lucky to have so many people supporting me. I must bring success to AGRIBUDDY and make them feel the success was because of me. (Laugh)

Yesterday, February 29^th is a date that only comes around every four years on a leap year and it turned out to be a great day for me personally and for AGRIBUDDY.

First, for AGRIBUDDY.

Since AGRIBUDDY’s concept was to link the local farmers in developing countries to the related businesses online to solve the various problems surrounding the current agricultural industry. It started as a small project in our company and in November 2014 we released the βversion, in January 2015 we officially spun off from the internal project and decided to proceed with corporate registration. We released the official version in April 2015, that was the flow of building our service.

Talking about “developing countries” and “agriculture” in one word is nonsense because the efforts of each country’s government and the situation of each farmers vary. But since Cambodia has so many issues and they are complexly intertwined, we felt that if we could build a service in Cambodia, we would be able to provide highly versatile services that work in other countries where the situation seems to be a little better off. With such thoughts on our minds, we started in a small province in Cambodia and improved our services through trial and error, now we are ready to expand our services to the nation and other neighboring countries such as Thailand and Vietnam, or even to South Asian countries such as Bangladesh and India.

So, in order to take this leap to the next big step, we need to realize our big goal of changing the way of agriculture in the world through the “formulation of dense and bold strategy” and “to build a strong organization”, we encountered some encouraging and wise partners with plenty of experience and strength to support us. One of them being Mr. Makoto Haruta who was a startup CFO at DeNA, grew the company to a billion-yen corporation and drew attention by acquiring and operating a professional baseball team (Yokohama DeNA BayStars) while he was the president. Another friend of his who is the ex-COO of AOL platforms Japan, Mr. Hisashige Hashimoto of Betacatalyst (http://betacatalyst.jp/) has agreed to accept the third-party allocation of shares and we signed the deals with them yesterday, on February 29^th.

With Mr. Haruta and Mr. Hashimoto joining us, team AGRIBUDDY is focusing more than ever and making efforts to achieve our goals. I would like to thank Mr. Nozu of Donuts (http://www.donuts.ne.jp/) who introduced them to me in Hanoi, I really appreciate the fate that connected us.

In my personal life, my daughter was born two weeks earlier than expected. It would have been a great story if she was born on the 29^th, since she would only have a birthday once every four years, and that would also prove my DNA of “news material”, but I think she decided to fight against that and was born 10 minutes after the date changed to March 1^st . looks like she already has the ability to detect crisis…

So, here it is. A new stage has begun for my company and as an individual.

That’s why a new stage began as a company as an individual. Everyone, please continue your continued support and advice. Much gratitude for the continuous support and advice from everyone. Thank you.