Fujitsu Establishes Akisai Farms as Test Bed for Akisai Food and Agriculture Cloud

Tokyo, May 13, 2013

Fujitsu today announced that Akisai Farms, which will include both open-air farming and greenhouse horticulture, is scheduled to open in mid-June, 2013. Located on the grounds of Fujitsu's Numazu facility, Akisai Farms will be a working farm to be used as a test bed for the Akisai food and agriculture cloud launched by the Company in July 2012, which helps farmers dramatically improve their efficiency through ICT.

As a service designed for open-air farming, greenhouse horticulture, and animal husbandry, the Akisai cloud supports every phase of the farming process, including production, management, and sales. In the past, through field tests employing ICT conducted with agricultural producers in Japan, Fujitsu has gained valuable know-how that it has then incorporated into its services. Now, with the opening of Akisai Farms, the data Fujitsu collects through its own testing and implementation efforts will further accelerate the development of its services.

Through the Akisai cloud, Fujitsu intends to support movement toward a new enterprise management style that will bring improvements to agriculture and food markets, while bringing about a plentiful future for food, where safe, secure, and delicious food products are always available.

Overview of Akisai Farms

1. Objective

1. Acquire cultivation-related data through the practice of farming, and apply acquired know-how and knowledge to the Akisai cloud
2. Test all aspects of ICT in farming, including cloud services, network technology, sensors, etc.
3. Test remote operation via the cloud

2. Starting date

Cultivation to begin mid-June, 2013

3. Location

Fujitsu's Numazu facility (140 Miyamoto, Numazu-shi, Shizuoka Prefecture)

4. Size

Two greenhouses (352 m²), open-air fields (approx. 1,000 m²)

5. Crops

• In greenhouses: senjusai (a red, leafy vegetable) and leafy greens
• In open-air fields: cabbage, daikon (Japanese radish) other leafy and root vegetables

6. Overview of implementation and applied services

1. Acquire crop-cultivation and related data from greenhouse horticulture
   "Greenhouse Horticulture SaaS," which uses data for greenhouse horticulture stored in the cloud, and the "Greenhouse Environment Control box," which is hardware that controls equipment and gathers sensor data in greenhouses, will be applied within greenhouses.
2. Production management and sensor-data acquisition from open-air farming
   Planning of production, labor, harvesting, and shipments, as well as collection and analysis of results in open-air fields will be handled by "Agriculture Production Management SaaS," while "Field Servers," which measure environmental data collected in the fields (temperature, humidity, daily variations, land temperature, land moisture, electrical conductivity, and visual imaging)
3. Testing of horticultural data sensing network in open-air farming
   The farm will use a special low-power wireless network to test low-power control methods for sensor networks.

About Senjusai Cultivation

Fujitsu is working with the WSB Group and Professor Shinya Oba of the Applied Biological Sciences Department at Gifu University in the greenhouses at Akisai Farms on adapting senjusai, a Japanese plant that can be grown year-round rather than only during the summer, to hydroponic cultivation. The data collected in the process will be used to optimize the growing environment.