Category Archives: AGRIBUDDY

I just got back from Hyderabad, India

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Hyderabad, which is known to be a huge commercial district for IT companies after Bangalore, has Google’s largest office outside of the USA with over 6000 employees, Microsoft has a base which you can easily mistake with a university campus and the overall scale is not comparable to other countries and reminds you that you are in India. Actually, the current CEO of Microsoft is from Hyderabad.

I am supposed to be a CEO of an IT company, but I visited Hyderabad not for its IT centralized location. In fact, I visited Andhra Pradesh state (which is supposedly called AP state) to research the possibility of AGRIBUDDY connecting with farmers in the area, AP state is next to Telangana state where Hyderabad is located. We are going to investigate what to do to spread AGRIBUDDY to ourselves, this is it. Apparently, Hyderabad was also a part of AP state until 2014, but the state broke up with Telangana, so the state capital disappeared. Until they build a new state capital, they decided to use Hyderabad for the time being. So, I had to go through Hyderabad, to meet the AP state’s government officials. As expected, India never lets you down with all its puzzles… (lol)

Well, as I arrived at the airport, I was struck by something which is truly Indian, but since Ms. Shigeta was going to meet me in Delhi the next day and would support me from there, I wasn’t too worried and got a good night’s sleep at my hotel.
By the way, Ms. Shigeta worked in Shanghai after graduating from the University of Tokyo, then moved to Delhi and has lived there for almost ten years, I am pretty sure she is the only person in Japan with such a unique career history. I was amazed to see her greatness from the following day.

Indian people love to talk. On this trip I met only the key persons of the provincial governments and the people surrounding them, so everyone was quite smart and argumentative by nature. It seems like the Indian style to interact with each other is to encourage each other using words against the first person’s reasoning (or words). If you try to cut through in the middle, they will continue the conversation with a higher volume and speed, leaving no room for us to interrupt. I got a lot of experience discussing in such style which I call “endless speakers” in Japan, talking with Mr. Yorihiko Kato who doesn’t even breath while talking, or my mentor Mr. Nagae who is good at overlapping conversations. But you know, Indians are at a totally different level. (lol)

They just don’t listen, well they interrupt and keep talking about whatever they like to talk about, so I felt defeated and had to turn to Ms. Shigeta to call the conversation off and get to the next appointment. But she would tell me that everything was okay, “They are trying to listen so let’s try a little harder.”, she would tell me.

What!? I have no room to judge the attitude of them “trying to listen”, but I have no choice but to leave it up to Ms. Shigeta.

Then, as soon she finds the moment that the other party seems to have ended what they wanted to say, she would compete back at them with words such as “For example, there is such a way of thinking, but etc. etc.”, the words were literally bursting out of her mouth, but she was also careful not to deny the opponent. I have seen many Japanese people who are fluent in English, but I have never seen anyone who can debate like she does. And the Indians of course debates back on her opinion too with ten times the reasoning to back their opinion. Ms. Shigeta would carefully listen and slowly fight back to them. I have never seen anything like it and I would say it is a work of art.(lol)

Well, I just can’t be like her.

According to Ms. Shigeta, if you are able to debate in such style, the opponent acknowledges your skills and in time that forms trust. But, if you debate back with denial, it doesn’t work well, only by accepting the other opponent’s opinion and telling them our purpose firmly and simply, it will work. It is a competition of patience, courage and smartness. I felt a glimpse of the reason why Japanese people are not good at interacting with Indian people.

With such unusual manners, each appointment easily takes two hours, we had six meetings like this in two days, and we got commitment of support from everyone. I would not have been able to do this on my own and I really appreciate it.

Now, there is only one direct fight between Siem Reap and Hyderabad per day and that departs Hyderabad at 1 AM (3 AM in BKK), arriving in Bangkok at 6 AM with only 3.5 hours in the air, a sleepless flight it is, and it sure requires physical strength. I will probably have to travel there from time to time from now on, but it is going to be a game of stamina. . .

Some unexpected things in Silicon Valley

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Several things I want to note about Silicon Valley which I didn’t expect.

First of all, the internet connection sucks. Comparing with Japan’s stress-free high-speed internet connection, it felt so slow and stressful every time I tried to download something. I am sure that I wasn’t the only one who felt that way about the internet speed, I thought to myself, this is pretty much the same as Cambodia.

Next topic. Well, this is something more than I had imagined but the reality of salaries for IT engineers and their lives. Salary for a freshman IT engineer who has some coding experience starts at about 120,000USD for someone who is slightly more talented, the salary starts at 140,000USD. But even with such high salaries, they are the sort of people who travel far from home and live on a tight budget without any savings, paying taxes and insurance is all they can cover. If one gets a tooth decay and have to go to the dentist, they will end up being in debt.

When a salary exceeds 170,000 USD, you will be able to commute by car. By the way, a startup CEO with full ambition’s salary will be about 80,000 USD a year, it seems that this is such a level of life that they will have to live in a tiny shared flat to be sustainable. The land price in San Francisco seems to be higher than of that in Manhattan, NY and the rent on a small one-bedroom room apartment will cost more than 3,000 USD.

By the way, AGRIBUDDY’s development section is based in Hanoi and even a quite high-leveled engineer can be hired at around 15,000 USD/year, that is roughly a tenth of the salary in Silicon Valley. So, if we say which would have a higher quality of life, I would say most likely Hanoi even with an annual income of only 15,000 USD, comparing with Silicon Valley’s income of 150,000 USD/year. Oh, of course, if you start talking about the atmosphere of the city or the quality of urban management, then it is not comparable. Personally, it seems like you will be living a pretty low-end life in Silicon Valley even if you had 150,000 USD per annum.

The other thing that everyone was saying, “You need to have strong connections if you wanted to survive in Silicon Valley, way more difficult of that in Japan, and if someone who has no connections visited investors such as venture capitals and angels without any notice, you will be denied. (well, even inquiring though the website or sending in your details or trying to make an appointment can be hard.) such actions that young people may like just does not work in Silicon Valley.” Taking a moment to think about this, it seems reasonable because thousands of people from around the world who think “my business is the BEST!” keep on sending corporate portfolio or trying to make appointments, just looking through the inquiry will be exhausting. Naturally, they will turn to those they trust for referrals to seek investment opportunity.

There will be cases that you will meet management directors who make more than a million dollars, so it will be an overwhelming task for those who send referrals to such investors too. One mistake can cost your trust that you spent your lifetime to build. Nevertheless, I have had the opportunity to talk to many influential people thanks to the referral of people around me. This is one of the “generosity which is hard to give back”, something I wrote in me last article.

In fact, Silicon Valley was nothing like what we had imagined, there are no such things as “Asia-oriented thinking or Global thinking” in Silicon Valley, most of whom we met seemed to have made time for us but quite puzzled when we told them that we were an agricultural service startup in Cambodia.

First of all, you must be successful in the American market.

That sort of ideology was the major premise and the reality is that you don’t have to be able to cover the global market. It might be natural to reach the global market as a result of your business activity. But first of all, you would register the corporation in the state of Delaware, live in the suburbs of Silicon Valley, create a service that is adopted by the American market. In order to be recognized in this intense connection-oriented society, you will have to bare huge costs (time and money) to form a network of great connections, wait for the big fish to catch you.

Silicon valley was on opposite sides with the image we have of an American dream, a place where anyone with dreams and ideas can challenge. This reality of Silicon Valley was quite surprising to me.

Well, but I was really glad I went. The direction and vision of AGRIBUDDY, the content that we must focus on and what the investors are interested became clearer. Thank you to those who took time to meet me during my stay in America.

Sharing Economy

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Let me discuss what I am thinking lately since I have been inspired by one of the blog articles by Mr. Kato, “The business style of ‘the sharing economy’ has been exploding in Asia. Food safety and security are more essential keys than low prices”.
(Sorry, this blog is written by Japanese)

Since I have a lots of opportunities to visit another countries, I am super tired of being ripped-off in every considerable way. Nuisances by low-quality-taxi drivers (aka “rip-off” drivers), such as purposely detours, ignoring or refusing me a ride, are kind of easy ones. I have an experience, which is that an unfamiliar guy, who was insisting that he was one of his friends, barged into a cab and offered me a sightseeing guide or tried to take me a shopping by force. Fortunately, yet I haven’t had anything horrible one, like a burglary. However, one of my friends has experienced a terrible one at Tiananmen Square in China. He was taken to an off-street by a driver of a cyclo taxi (a bicycle taxi) and was surrounded and threatened by a gang group.

When I went to Vietnam for the first time, I was ripped-off by a taxi driver also. Since then, I am just holding distrust all taxi drivers in each country in general. However, my distrust was completely blew away by using Uber while I was staying in Hanoi for a whole August. It was a very shocking surprise I couldn’t even believe. The drivers of Uber were very polite, each of the car was clean, and the fees were clearly reasonable and amazingly cheaper than other taxies. I couldn’t stop thinking that this was what the era was seeking for and no one could stop this flow with any sort of forces.

The characters of the sharing economy business are generating and uniting lots of micro enterprises (ultra-small-scale independent businesses) and uncovering the fact of that enterprises with large top-down managements will be ended up near future. This Uber and Airbnb on Mr. Kato’s blog are great examples of this fact, I think.

In fact, it can be said that the same thing is happening to the field of agriculture. Because of the systematic efficiency and the cost reductions by the enterprises with huge-scale plantations, food products were successfully distributed to each country and brought some profit to the world. It was four years ago that we launched our plantation business in Cambodia because we also felt that the field of agriculture was going to be a big business due to the population growth and the food supply.

However, in the middle of the way, we have realized that this business won’t last long. Well, it is impossible in the first place to ask local people to do high-quality works with only three dollars per day. In addition, the daily allowance for the labor is increasing as the economic condition is improving. Now, as the daily allowance for the labor, we have to pay minimum five dollars per person, and depending on the season, it is seven or eight dollars per person. This amount is twice as big as the amount when we had started our farm. So, in the long run, if we’d like to own a large-scale plantation, we have only two choices; one is that making a methodical unmanned system or a perfect automation system (it is very hard to have either on in a developing country), and the other one is building enforced slavery by using economic slaves under the justice, which is “we are paying money to each worker”.

Additionally, as the business is getting bigger, frauds, garbage, and mistakes will be probably happened. Then, in order to prevent these issues, we have to install and maintain another system, which needs more cost as a result.

Huge taxi companies, huge hotel chains, and huge plantations are in the same boat. Each of them used to be a business model of the top-down management, which does the ultimate cost down to gain the biggest profit by uniting and managing inefficient small enterprises. On the other hand, under this business model, it is very hard to maintain products’ quality and eventually a company has to pay more attention and money to fix each problem which come out everywhere in their business.

It is said that the number of the guestrooms owned by Hilton Group, the biggest hotel chain in the world, and the number of the guestrooms registered on Airbnb are finally same, which is 600,000 rooms. Which one do you think, Hilton Group or Airbnb, goes along with the era? Hilton Group is a huge hotel chain but needs to manage all of this massive scale of rooms with their own top-down management. Meanwhile, Airbnb is a new business model but each owner of the hotels of Airbnb works very hard to improve his/her hotel quality to make a profit. The answer is as clear as day, don’t you think?

I think this is the exact example which may happen in the field of agriculture. By suggesting specific advantages to each ultra-small-scale independent farmer (a micro enterprises), we develop a model of a network organization to increase an individual productivity. Uber and Airbnb have proved that using internet makes even the network organization, not the top-down organization (in short, a business model which a boss orders everything to his/her employee),capable to get highly motivated people together to increase the productivity as a virtual huge-scale-organization.

As Mr. Kato is saying on his blog, the service of “the sharing economy” is comfortable for not only the users but the workers as well…, that is probable a key for the business explosion.

Urbanisation

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This article, which is saying that the growth of the urban population is getting bigger from now on, definitely helps you understand the demographics and the impact easily.

Urbanisation is the most essential issue for a population theory.
(Sorry, this article is written by Japanese)

A few years ago, I saw a data, which said that the world urban ratio had reached 51% and it was expected that the ratio would increase up to 70% within next forty years. Well, it is said that the world population will increase to ten billion by 2050. So if all the facts are true, it can be said that the urban population will be seven billions by 2050 as well, which is almost the same number as the current world population.

Since the current ratio of the urban population to the rural population is 1 to 1, the number of the urban population and the rural population is the same, which is 3.5 billion for each. In short, the current fact, which is that one farmer raises and provides food just for one urban person, will be changed in the future since the urban population will be seven billion and the rural population will be 3.5 billion within next forty years. Under this expectation, one farmer has to raise and provide food for more than two urban persons. .

Well, it is a little bit different story, but since I came to a developing country and started to observe the local farmers, I have realized a very simple fact, which is that there are only a few people who choose to be and work as a farmer here. They were born in this little farm village by chance and they raise some plants with their traditional but old way because there are no different choices in their life at all. Or it can be said that they just farm because all their neighbors do. Their life, which is just a little better than living off the land, is a real and typical farmer’s life in this developing country. What they do is not an “agriculture business”, it is just a part of “housework” to live, which is the same as cleaning and doing laundry.

As we want to finish cleaning and laundry easily, they also want to get their housework, “growing plants”, done easily and quickly. Therefore, even how often Non-Government Organizations send volunteers and how hard they teach agriculture to the locals, the efforts of the volunteers just ends up fruitlessly. The volunteers, who don’t mind how long or how hard they work, try to teach and train the locals to produce something better. However, on the other hand, what the locals want is knowledge how they can grow plants without any single effort.

Well, let’s say there is one young guy, who cooks without any interests. He just cooks because he needs to live. Would you call him a chef? I would not. We should not call him a chef, we should not send a professional chef to teach him how to cook as well. For him, sending a professional brings nothing at all because he just doesn’t want to cook. When you think about an agriculture business in a developing country, just remember this example because it probably helps you a lot (lol).

Anyway, for that reason, the most of “people who are categorized as farmers” in a rural area don’t want to do agriculture. They tend to choose an urban life if they could earn money more easily and have a better life. On the other hand, the ratio of people who choose to be and work as a farmer will be higher among the people who stay in a farm area. For the people who decide to risk his/her life as a professional farmer, the agricultural market will be automatically twice as big as the current one in next forty years. Of course, the impact of the food consumption of the people who live off the land and the people who enjoy the urban life is a different level. Therefore, it can be said that the actual expand of the agricultural market could be more than twice as the current one.

So…, while developing AGRIBUDDY, I am recently thinking that having a partnership with “the people who have chosen to be a professional farmer” is a right way to build an agricultural business here… well, let’s wait and see how it goes.

Data shows Japanese agri-problems

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I am going to stay in Hanoi, Vietnam for a month starting from today to the end of August. The main purpose of living in Hanoi is that making a team to speed up the development of AGRIBUDDY, which is reaching the best part of completing and launching all of the facilities. Although I sound like I am so energetic for this development, I am kind of useless here right now since I can’t even write a code. So, the thing I am doing here is just being careful and quiet not to bother the engineers who are really focusing on their job.

Well, today’s blog is about there are many interesting facts going on at developing countries in Asia, where many users of AGRIBUDDY are living. A various data of the agriculture of each of these countries tell us that there are many facts we should think about.

First of all, let’s take a look at the start-ups of the field of agriculture in the U.S, which are recently booming. The number of the famers (we can say ‘people who does the agriculture business’) in the U.S is approximately one million. Massive plow lands in the U.S, which are 168MM hectares in total and cover 10% of the plow land of the world, are owned by only one million farmers. This means that 153 hectares (Little bit bigger than Augusta National Golf Club) of the plow land is owned by one farmer and it makes approximately $1600 sales per 1 hectares  (10,000㎡ or 2.47ac).

Let’s talk about Cambodia, the country I am currently living in. The number of people who do any kind of agricultural businesses in Cambodia is 3.8 million, which is about four times as big as the U.S. On the other hand, the total size of the plow land is 4.2MM hectares, which is about 1/40 of the plow land of the U.S. The yearly seals of 1-hectar-plow land in Cambodia is approximately $1200 and one farmer owns 1.1 ha on average. So, on a simple level, the annual sales (not annual income) is about $1320 and this number proves how poor the farmers in Cambodia are.

The reason why the productive value per 1 hectare of both the U.S and Cambodia are such a low is that both of them grow the low-value-added products, which are commodity products, such as corns, wheats, and rice. However, the farmers of the U.S are succeeded to gain some profits by producing huge amount of crops by implementing a model of “the large-scale production with a small group people”. In Cambodia (actually in any developing countries), they also grow the low-value-added products as the U.S does, but they do their agriculture business with a labor-intensive-method. Therefore, it makes sense that the farmers in Cambodia never be able to be rich no matter how hard they work.

Let’s talk about my country, Japan. Japan, which has many agricultural problems in many ways, has surprisingly $11,000 seals per 1 hectare and it seems like Japan is very good at the agriculture like an A-student in a school. However, by looking at it from another angle, we can see some problems, which we knew there would be.

スクリーンショット 2015-11-01 5.32.36 PM

The chart above is showing a comparison between the agriculture in Israel, which is known as one of the agricultural developed countries and the one in Japan. First of all, please take a look at the number of production value per one farmer. Compare to the number of Japan, which is about $30,000, the one of Israel is $120,000, which is four times bigger than the amount of Japan. Furthermore, the value per 1 hectare is $10,000 (Japan) and $20,000 (Israel), which means the difference between them is close to the double. Furthermore again, let’s take a look at the size of the plow land owned by one farmer. One farmer in Israel has 2.5 times bigger plow land than the plow land owned by one Japanese farmer. Let me explain this fact in short;

“The agriculture in Japan never pursues the thorough productivity. Since each of plow land is owned by Japanese workers with high labor cost, the productive value of the agriculture is not even close to the average income of Japanese workers of other business fields.”

In short, the first problem is that the number of the farmers is too big for the size of the plow land in Japan. I think it works better if we reduce the number of the farmers to 1/3 of the present number. The next problem is that the productive value per size is very small. Even the country, which is located in the middle of desert and spend 60% of the national budget as the defense expenditure, can make some profits by implementing its agriculture effectively. The fact, which is that the farmers in Japan make only half of the profit of that country, brings the result, which is “there are so many, actually more than necessary unmotivated farmers staying in the agriculture business in Japan.

I am pretty sure if these unmotivated farmers leave their land to the motivated farmers and start another jobs, these problems will be resolved immediately. However, on the other hand, I know there are some reasons we can’t even reveal are protecting the Japanese farmers. Well, even though we analyze the issues of the agriculture in Japan, there is little thing we can do to change these facts. On the other hand, regarding developing countries, there is a lot we can do. Since the labor fee of the developing countries is pretty low at first, if the farmers can grow some high-value-added-products, their life will be several times as good as the present life. The focus AGRIBUDDY is aiming at exists in these facts.

Well, I am sorry, I didn’t mean to write such a long blog. Anyway, let me say hello to everyone in Hanoi and I would appreciate if all of you could accept and take care of me starting from today.

Official AGRIBUDDY has been released!

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AGRIBUDDY β version was released on November 17th in 2014 as an internet application service for farmers in developing country.  At a start, we have used it for ourselves to major the hectares of our farms with its GPS function and let some real local farmers (And our team Japanese farmers who are challenging in agribusiness in Cambodia) to use AGRIBUDDY only with selected function to see their reactions for the gadget and seeking the points to improve and to find right direction of AGRIBUDDY.

How could we let local farmers, who have never even touched smartphones, or don’t even know what an internet is, use and enjoy AGRIBUDDY well? How could we minimise their irrational decisions they make or, act they do because of a minimum information and data they have. We have been focusing on there and been pondering the essential functions for the system.

What we came up as our first answer for this is to build network of all farmers in developing country. Making them able to share correct and accurate skills or information by construct networking of local farmers who might never once step out 50 km far from their home and lives in a society with closed information. We realised that Let them able to show their work or result to others and receive recognition or appraisal can be a big first step to improve agriculture of developing country.

As in the article I wrote in the other day “The things people in poverty want”, the number of smartphone holders are increasing even in Cambodia where seems to be the perfect example of developing country with poverty. A price of smartphones or any other cutting edge technology gadget are becoming cheaper day by day and internet coverage area is expanding rapidly as it is reaching even to deep into jungle. Because of such dramatic shift I am actually encountering, I can clearly see the people who have been forgotten from the world of techs and ITs will be creating new network with smartphones they will have in very near future.

If there is such future is coming soon, I want to build and shape it with our hands. I know that everyone is thinking “Well it will now work that easy!” and that is exactly why I want to challenge on it.

And, as we release our official version of AGRIBUDDY, our Hong Kong established AGRIBUDDY will be working fund raising with Scentan Ventures which has strong connection to world wide venture capital investment. With this action, we will rev up a speed of development with feedbacks and we will tackle on to build only and the biggest farmers network in developing country.

The things people in poverty want.

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Cambodian and its people, especially locals who lives in country side were thought to be poor (Or in poverty) as if perfect example of poverty. Well, it is not wrong. They rarely have a big amount of cash or something. However, the things such as hunger or starvation that most people often think of with poverty are not happening in Cambodia. And most are thinking that the cause of such poverty is a lack of work opportunities. So, it means that if there are chances or places to work, they will be rich.

However, what I have noticed recently as I am going and interact deeper with local villagers is that there actually are jobs and there are plenty of opportunities for them to make some extra cash. It is different as, for example Japan, where people are really busy as much as they die. Well, literally. So, I thought that why don’t they work a bit more since they have plenty of time left. But I kind of understanding why they do not do it so.

The reason is that “There is nothing to spend a money for”. It seem difficult to understand at a glance.

You may think “Well, there are plenty of way to spend you money!”. I was thinking the same of course. But money will be effective when there is more than some amount of it and if they make only $100 of extra money, their life won’t change dramatically. In fact, if they work bit longer than now, they will make only $100 – $200 a month.

Of course there are things they want to have. Something like, new motorcycle, car, flat screen TV, house with air-con, fridge or gold watch… but they are all cost more than $100 or $200. Unlike developed countries, there isn’t system of credit or credit card, in that case, it is impossible for them to purchase those things. Well, they have theey can no use air-con or fridge since there are not electric grid yet.

If it is in your country, there must be some way to spend money if you have an extra $100. Like big fancy dinner, nice closes, have a movie night or take a small trip to somewhere. There are varieties of choices. But in Cambodia, choice of using $100 would be “Drinking beer” or “play cards with neighbours with drinking beer”. …yup. They are smart enough to not work if there is only a way to waste their money. If they want to drink they can work bit of extra for a day and it will be enough.

However, there is a thing that changes their concept of using their money. Smartphones. IPhone is their lofty dream and only few guys in village have it. But even for ordinary people, they now can buy used smartphones with around $100. They don’t even know how to use it but since Cambodian tend to think that it is a shame to not have something others are having, more and more people are having smartphones and you can see them selling middle of now where on dirt road where there is no electricity.

By looking at such change in local people in suburbs of Cambodia, I am thinking that smartphone user will keep increasing in all over the world.

 

Recommended Startup Business for 2015

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The U.S. based business magazine “Inc” release the result of their interview about best 8 business sector in 2015.

http://www.inc.com/graham-winfrey/best-industries-2015-the-best-industries-for-starting-a-business-in-2015.html

Their choice of best 8 businesses are as below.

  • Fantasy Sport Services (Online Sports Games)
  • Gamification Services
  • Relaxation Beverages (Opposite of energy kinda drinks)
  • Yoga and Pilates
  • Legal Marijuana
  • Food E-commerce
  • Public-Sector Technology
  • Agriculture Software

Needless to say that AGRIBUDDY which HUGS is working on current days is Agricultural Software. And not only it’s an agricultural software but, I say, it’s one step in front of being regular software as the system is aiming for “the users in under developed countries where hasn’t cultivated (As a business)”. Since we are considering that gamification of the system is important factor for our system to let the users enjoy the system, AGRIBUDDY is covering two sectors in above, gamification and agriculture software.

When I and Jiro (My partner) moved to Cambodia, it was just before the country get attention as business field. So, even though I was quite excited to say “I will be doing business in Cambodia”, no one really listened and general view of Japanese toward Cambodia was that Cambodia is the place to do volunteering, not a place to make money. However, now I am quite sure our feeling of “Cambodia will ignite” was correct as I see number of TV programs are featuring Cambodia and tons of business people are rushing in here now a days.

I decided to challenge in Cambodia with macro scale agriculture business because I was seeing a strong potential in the sector where most of business people won’t touch. I was thinking from the beginning that mixing agriculture and IT and finance will be a big business soon. Why I thought like that has no magic behind. In fact, it is very simple that there won’t be a business that doesn’t need IT and finance solution but, only in agriculture sector, there aren’t any of solution involving in yet.

Unfortunately, doing agriculture in under developed country is such a survival and are not able to get a result easily. However because of difficulties, I now could see which part we need IT solution the most or how to add financial service into where. Thanks for that I am getting vast amount to datas and experience. And the AGRIBUDDY is the things that I concentrated all of my past experience and time in Cambodia, I feel that is it a great timing as the world is becoming more aware of ITed agriculture business and I am feeling a leading wind finally.

Beside the Inc’s article this time, Google’s director Eric Shmit as well established agriculture start up project called Farm2050. It was a big news as well.

There are numerous numbers of problems which entrepreneurs need to tackle on. However, 90% of entrepreneurs are concentrate on 10% of such problems and agricultures isn’t included into that 10% even thought, we will be needing to produce 70% more of food as our population increase to 10 billion in 2050. When the interests of entrepreneurs spread into the subject that are really important, the number of technology related organisation increase to 100 to 1,000 times more than now. The project were established based on such thought and to support entrepreneurs who go on the business which mixed agriculture and IT tech.

As Inc article suggest, as Monsanto, notorious agricultural giant, bought out agriculture start up company with $800 million, it is now known that possibility of exiting with large price as well may being a cause to attract venture capitals or investors. Anyways, getting eyes of investors will ease the entrepreneurs to fund them and it means that more of start up will be established.

Cambodia and IT with agriculture and startups. When I begin our business, there were no wind at all but now I can feel the wind blowing for sure. I must grab this wind and ride on the big wave to produce a result that give a big impact to the world.

Safety box is gone

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While I was away from Siem Reap with business trip, incident happened in my office.

A safety box with cash inside which was placed in the locked drawer of our accounting room of our office were stolen in broad daylight. Our office is regular house. So if someone from outside try to steal it, the person have to open heavy metal entrance gate and open the big wooden door of our office then have to go in to accounting room and then identify the drawer and unlock it, then take the cash box which happened to have lots of cash inside on the day. I say, only Arsene Lupin can pull this trick off.

The circumstance unfortunately said that it was an inside job. Since we only have 10 staffs in the office, the thief should have known that we will find out who did it.

And so, there were one female staff who suppose to resign on the next day of the incidence. And as my staff reported me that her reaction before the incidence surfaces were clearly odd and immediately after they found out that safe was gone, everyone pointed their fingers at her and accused her directly by saying “You did it, didn’t you!”. Haha.

But of course she denied and they decided to call a police. Calling a police in Cambodia means to cost extra money. It will be the same if you call fire fighters or judge/court. If you try to solve a problem and let public officials involve, it costs you “a lot” in here. Because of that, most of Cambodians try to solve problem by themselves.

Well, anyways. With their investigation, she confessed at police station. Apparently, she had sent the money to one of her account from her another account via WING (Money transfer system in Cambodia like Western Union thing). It was the evidence to close the case.

The incident costed for our time and energy and left bad taste in our mouth but we retrieved the money at the end. That was very good outcome. And my staff being able to solve the incidence by themselves while I was gone was another very good outcome in this bad experience.

The girl who stole money called me and said “I did it with impulse I’m sorry. Forgive me please. But I can not cover the fee to pay to police so, why don’t your company pay for it?”. …Let me just say, why in the hell the company need to pay? She was preparing copied key for the drawer. It can not be an impulse incident. But since explaining it to her is only a waste of time, we just ask her to sell her motorbike.

If I let someone go to market, they say “I lost the money” or “I get robbed” or “I got cheated for change” and if I let someone control a farm, they say “I don’t know what happened but thief came and stole”. Or they once told me water of our fish pond dried up and fish disappear with it. …Well, magical things keep happening in here but I say that this is only a piece of a reality of doing business in developing country. So, I got to deal with it.

 

Agriculture is sizzling!

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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)
プロジェクター用ver..001

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