This is the article my friend Kazu, CEO of Framgia, posted on his facebook “Why an agriculture that is decreasing in Japan is considered as growing industry in the world?”

http://blogos.com/outline/102779/ (The source is from Economist magazine)

As I begin to have my eyes on agriculture and investment 3 years ago, I have given opportunities to do my presentation to people. To wrap my up presentation it says that the world population is estimated to reach 10 billion but farm land to produce food (Include to produce feed grains) for such population is decreasing each year. So, it means that some investing people are already going for the position to grab farm land. My presentation say basically like that. And some datas actually shows high return in farm land investment. For example the data below. It indicate the price of farm land and the shift of real estate price in the U.S.

(Top bars shows the shift of farm land price. Bars at down shows the shift of real estate price)

In last 10 years, notorious financial crisis that caused by burst of subprime loan in the U.S occurred and effected to the world. It traced overbrilliant downfall in the shift of real estate price. However, farm land price which as well was taking a part of financial bubble that thought to go down actually kept rising. Money goes to where money is. Because the price goes up, more purchase comes in, then it increases the price more. It not only happening in the U.S but also in South America and Africa and of course in Asia where I am currently in.

The tycoon Jim Rogers once said “Must purchase the farm where has rains and let the farmers who knows the job to work. If you do so, you can double the profit since a price of crop itself are increasing”. This is exactly why we came to Cambodia and find farm land then do agriculture. Well, but as I have been writing in my blog, it just isn’t that easy to do farming in developing country though.

However in these 3 years, I have learned a lot from my experience and feel that I now could latch onto the point where I can produce the result and to do so where I need to push. And I also can see what is fatally lacking as well. While I have been working my project, agriculture sector is getting more attention and more player is coming in. It I say just the best timing for us.

In this agricultural sector that shall be much more interesting from here, I want to set my motto that I will play with the highest technology In the place where the technology is the least developed.

Well, it is not that I’m just playing with my drone all the time. Hehe! But I do not deny that I most of the time enjoy and get excited with my project as kid plays his toy, but I just kinda want to change lame and old image of agriculture. Y’all know what I’m sayin?

– See more at: http://hugs-int.com/kengo/archives/2261#sthash.K2vkIwwV.dpuf

We only have HUGS cooperate site till recently but as we spin off our company into separate companies (Well, it supposed to be separated long time ago, but it has been delayed big time with very “Cambodia like” problem we have gotten used to already), we build our own page.

https://www.facebook.com/hugsagrico

I am able to speak “Kanglish” (English with Kansai Japanese accent) and comprehend English with varieties of accent and read some easy English novel like Sidney Sheldon type. However, I am not good at writing an English at all. If I write some English sentence, google immediately gives them bunch of red alert lines and they can’t even find candidate word from my spelling. But our business is actually not really for Japanese but for global market. To let the world know what we do, English is the most convenient way thus far. But since I am bad at writing, I let Ms. Sayaka, bilingual staff of HUGS to update English version of this blog and operation of Facebook cooperate page. And this is the picture she posted on Facebook page the other day.

This map literally is the origin of AGRIBUDDY. The map measured with foot of our farm manager and drawn by their bear hands. By the way, each map shows our 100 hectares of land (The size of 2 Tokyo Disney Land). They measured that 2 of 100 hectares of land by walking around with 100 m maximum of tape measure and divide them into plots, then made it into these maps. If I look back now it was almost impossible even to ask them to make it into a map. I really appreciate that they made it for us. But I say that it haven’t change from our Edo era 200 years ago if we had to walk around and measured then make hand drawn map. Of course we were using GPS but no one really have enough skills to utilise the system fully.

Then now, we can have this perfect map like below by just walking around a farm with AGRIBUDDY installed smartphone.

Well, our agriculture system all the sudden across 200 years of time (and space?) and touch the technology of current world! hooray! Then from here we have to be the one to lead the world of technology in agriculture. We have to evolve and give AGRIBUDDY a constant evolution. And we will change agriculture in developing countries by our hands.

Anyway, probably most of companies in Japan already have the last day of working in 2014 and preparing for 2015. Thank you all for your great support in 2014 and I strive on my work to receive your continuous support on 2015.

Let our 2015 to be the best year ever and wish you to stride more than ever!

Best wishes from Cambodia.

Thank you.

Agriculture operation support service FarmLogs, the company that AGRIBUDDY sees as its benchmark, just succeeded to raise $10 million in round B as they were financed $4 million in round A in last year.

http://m.jp.techcrunch.com/2014/12/18/20141217farmlogs-nabs-10m-series-b-from-sv-angel-sam-altman-and-others/

Well, I don’t know how much shares they divided in this finance but probably around 10%? It means that the valuation of around $100 million, I guess? It is a great achievement  anyway. I say this is such a huge wave for us who develop AGRIBUDDY and I am very happy to know that my estimation that this kind of agricultural related service can receive appropriate appraisal from society and can have over $100 million valuation at the 1st round of finance. It proves that what I was thinking was not just a delusion because it is actually happened.

Target market of Farmlogs are farmers in U.S. where agriculture has been “ITed” (or “ITlised” I should say?) slowly and they reaches to the demographic who have stable access to internet and a computer or smartphones. On the other hand our AGRIBUDDY tries to reach to the farmers who owns smartphones and reside in the area with internet lines but never connect to the world of internet and do not even have a google account. (Let’s say they do not even know what’s google).

Everyday, we are showing and introducing our AGRIBUDDY in suburbs of Cambodia. And each time I have this absolute feeling that we are “the first creature that let them, the locals, connect to the world of internet”. Spreading the service we have created to the people who no one ever reached is of course extremely difficult task with long shot but the fruits we can harvest from it must be unbelievably delicious. And it will be proven very soon.

Well, let’s get to work!

In the last article, I wrote “If people in poverty start being rich, they begin to eat meat”. And then I wrote that to produce the meat for those, we need significant amount of feed grain. Means that our meat eating diet is sustained by that extremely inefficient luxury. This time I will go bit deeper about the issue.

In EU, average meat consumption is 70 kg per person. To produce this 70 kg of meat, we need 420 sq meters of grain farm. It is the same size as 1 basketball court.

Every year, people in EU consume a meat which ate one basket ball court of grain feed. And we, an Asians, eat average of 27 kg of meat. It needs 160 sq meters of grain farm to produce grain feed. It means that we use 160 sq meter land for 3.6 billion people to produce a grain feed. How big is that then? It is the size of combining France and Belgium together.

Then as I wrote, if the population of Asian region exploded to 4.5 billion and they become rich enough to eat meat, their average meat consumption shall be around 35 kg. Of course then we need more land to produce feed grains you know. It will be around the size of Japan.

Well, even if we, the people in developed countries, think that “Ok. I ate enough eat meat in my life, so, we should reduce it for our health!”. Since we won’t be able to force that to people in developing countries, we have to increase the produce of feed grain somehow to sustain a demand.

Why I see the potential in developing countries such as Cambodia, it is because they probably can take such demand. The countries has factors like low in harvest yield, cheap labor cost and vast uncultivated land. In this land, I have been trying from cultivation of land to produce of crops and then to logistics and more over, I tried production of feed grain and even production of meat. Let me tell you that I am having straight loss because of tons of unexpected problems and events. Yes I know. Thank you. But now I could feel that I know how I should play with those.

Now I see what I was envision when I come to Cambodia and start agriculture 3 years ago. Cambodian people around me begins to eat meat more and more. Price of pork is increasing, import of meat cow is getting active, foreign organisation that do mass cattle husbandry is stepping into Cambodia. I think increasing an efficiency of agriculture itself is the only way to sustain such dramatical and significant change in food culture.

And in my country Japan where most of feed grain are imported, what is going to happen with this sharp depreciation of yen? They will never be able to eat a meat the price we had been eating…