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…

Yesterday my son turned to 1. At the same day we have released β version of AGRIBUDDY, Agriculture data control service for under developing country, with Google Play. We struggled to develop it for 1 year and half but finally we did it.

2010, I have moved to Cambodia. And 2011 the next year, I and Jiro who is my partner and co-head and other team mates established HUGS. What we put our hands on right after the establishment was agriculture. I literally run around jungles in Cambodia to find ideal land to do farm and found 1000 hectares of land. We cultivate it and was getting ready to begin real farming. However, the result was so Cambodia like. We were thrown into the situation of “Sorry! I do not understand at all but there is no one to put responsibility on”. I don’t write a detail because it is too complicated but anyway, It costed significant amount of cash to cultivate and we were not able to use the land at all.

I could not stop there. Never. So, I changed the strategy to cultivate a forest into a farm. I found some land to rent. Then we started cassava farming in nearly 1,000 hectares of land, again. We divide the land into 25 hectares each and positioned dozens of farm managers and hundreds of labours in each plot. And let them work various tasks at the same time. A size of the farm was vast. There were number of plots. Farm managers send us some report. We could know what is happening but we couldn’t “understand” what is really going on. It was such a dilemma. I continue the operation wondering how others are controlling their farms. To be honest, I couldn’t even tell where I actually was in the farm at that time. It was hard time physically and mentally.

As I struggle, flood that occurred in 2012 attacked east of Thailand and West of Cambodia brutally. The flood of course reached to our farm which expand to the border. Farm was devastated and the emails that farm managers looked spam mail because so many mails are sent to me  from all the managers reporting the damage with pictures.

This picture, that picture, all were capturing a flood.

I could tell that there are damage. But I could not understand where is actually damaged and how bad. I know it is like “Oh my gosh. Something is just so wrong.” Sure yes. But I could not understand the situation with precise numbers or amount at all. I told our manager to draw a map so, it might be easier to understand.

I just told myself “No way. I will never be able to do farming properly”.

“Why no one wonder this is wrong? Why no one question this inconvenience and try to change?”.

Well, I thought that there must be some cool thing or service for this. I searched. There were couple of things that is close to what I envision but even though the service wasn’t that significant they were charging a lots of money or some seems to require lessons to just start using. Nothing satisfied me. Then as I continue my search, I realised that IT innovation in agriculture is progressing way too slow compare to other industries. When they say high-tech innovative agriculture, it is like automated vegetable growing factory thing that completely ignoring where the reality is.

Anyway, the foundation for some cool innovative engineer to develop some goodies with well usability was not existing in agriculture sector. When you come right down to it, some service developed in Silicon Valley seemed good but they could not function well in the underdeveloped country where I do farming. Why? Because premises itself in developed countries and underdeveloped countries is just way too different. Education level, moral and needs are just way too different. When I can’t even find the service that function well in developed countries, of course I could not find any service that can function in underdeveloped country, where with the people never once connected to internet.

Ok. Well, then why don’t we develop the system then!? If we are struggling, there must be someone else that are having same problem. If these farmers in underdeveloped country continue doing farming in this way without taking any data or whatsoever, it won’t take them anywhere and never increase their harvest yield. If I can develop something in somewhere that no one is yet to put their hand on, it probably create huge value. Then, AGRIBUDDY was born.

Now, we are at the start. I say, we just have reached to the start line. At the beginning, I was thinking to complete my business in here in 5 years and move to somewhere else. But my plan didn’t work at all. In last 4 years, there weren’t any success but only disappointments, failures, struggles and reglets I was experiencing. However, my challenge never ends. I have just started my new challenge. Well, let’s roll.