TOKYO –
Japanese agricultural expertise startup Oishii Farm is searching for to remodel international meals manufacturing by synthetic intelligence, robotics and absolutely managed indoor farming, having succeeded in mass-producing Japanese strawberries within the United States and now becoming a member of forces with main Japanese producers to develop plant factories for export worldwide.
Founded within the United States by Japanese entrepreneur Hiroki Koga, Oishii Farm has developed expertise that recreates Japan’s rising circumstances inside massive industrial services, controlling temperature, humidity and even the wavelengths of synthetic gentle. Its most vital breakthrough has been utilizing AI to watch the conduct of particular person bees, enabling pure pollination inside a plant manufacturing unit, one thing beforehand thought-about extraordinarily troublesome.
The firm has constructed one of many world’s most superior indoor strawberry manufacturing services about an hour’s drive from Manhattan, New York. Completed in 2025, the big manufacturing unit occupies a former plastics manufacturing advanced that was as soon as among the many largest within the United States.
Inside, rows of strawberries are cultivated on a number of ranges in an atmosphere designed to breed Japanese rising circumstances all year long.
Unlike typical Japanese strawberry farming, the place the primary harvest season runs from December by March or April, Oishii Farm can preserve manufacturing three hundred and sixty five days a 12 months, no matter out of doors climate circumstances.
The best problem was pollination. While leafy greens will be cultivated comparatively simply in indoor factories, producing fruits that require insect pollination has historically been much more difficult.
Koga and his engineers developed a system combining rigorously managed environmental circumstances with proprietary AI expertise to watch the actions and conduct of particular person bees. By creating circumstances that make the bugs behave as if they’re of their pure habitat, the corporate succeeded in attaining dependable pollination and large-scale strawberry manufacturing.
The expertise has helped Oishii Farm overcome one of many greatest obstacles to industrial indoor fruit farming.
Automation extends to harvesting. The firm makes use of robotic arms manufactured by Japanese industrial robotic maker Yaskawa Electric, fitted with imaging sensors and proprietary AI software program that determines when particular person strawberries are ripe sufficient to choose.
The robots then harvest the fruit routinely, decreasing dependence on handbook labor whereas sustaining constant high quality.
Oishii Farm’s engineers constantly prepare the AI programs utilizing data collected from rising strawberries, progressively enhancing the accuracy of each cultivation administration and harvesting.
Despite the delicate look of its services, lots of the manufacturing unit’s important elements have been designed and manufactured internally.
Koga mentioned the corporate’s intensive staff of engineers develops particular person components and integrates them into personalized manufacturing programs, giving Oishii Farm better management over its expertise.
The outcomes have enabled the corporate to distribute Japanese-style strawberries to roughly 500 shops throughout the United States.
The high quality of the strawberries has additionally attracted consideration from Japan’s high-end restaurant trade.
At Ginza Shinohara, a two-Michelin-starred Japanese restaurant in Tokyo, chef Takanori Shinohara sampled strawberries introduced by Koga and praised their distinctive taste.
Inspired by the fruit’s sweetness and aroma, Shinohara created an unique dish combining strawberry jam, foie gras, caviar and generously reduce contemporary strawberries, completed with a whiskey jelly and enclosed in a conventional Japanese monaka wafer.
The creation demonstrated how the strawberries’ sturdy taste and perfume may complement luxurious substances equivalent to foie gras and caviar.
Koga, who beforehand labored at a consulting firm, based Oishii Farm within the United States in 2017 after turning into more and more involved about the way forward for international meals manufacturing.
He believes typical agriculture faces mounting challenges from local weather change, shrinking provides of agricultural land and water, and shortages of employees.
“If things continue as they are, agriculture will inevitably become unsustainable,” Koga mentioned, explaining his perception {that a} substantial proportion of meals manufacturing will ultimately shift to managed indoor services.
He estimates that the transition may create an trade price 100 trillion yen and sees a chance for Japan to turn out to be a number one provider of the expertise wanted to assist it.
Rather than start with comparatively easy crops, Koga intentionally selected strawberries, thought-about among the many most troublesome fruits to domesticate in plant factories.
His reasoning was that mastering one of many trade’s best technical challenges would give the corporate a aggressive benefit because the market expanded.
He additionally selected to ascertain the enterprise within the United States, one of many world’s most demanding and aggressive client markets.
After years of experimentation, the corporate succeeded in commercializing its expertise and has attracted roughly 52.5 billion yen in funding from traders in Japan and the United States.
Koga is now getting ready for the following section of growth, which entails constructing extra services exterior the New York space whereas creating standardized plant manufacturing unit modules that may be manufactured and exported internationally.
Japan is central to that technique.
The entrepreneur believes Japan possesses vital benefits in precision manufacturing, industrial robotics and environmental management expertise, creating alternatives for Japanese companies to turn out to be main suppliers to the rising indoor agriculture trade.
In February 2025, Koga started laying the groundwork for Oishii Farm’s growth into Japan.
At a gathering in Tokyo, he gathered key members of the corporate’s administration staff to judge a big selection of premium Japanese strawberry varieties bought from native retailers.
Some of the strawberries price as a lot as 3,500 yen per package deal, whereas others have been priced at round 2,500 yen.
The function was to match their taste, sweetness, perfume and general high quality with Oishii Farm’s current merchandise and determine how the corporate may differentiate its strawberries when coming into the Japanese market.
Among the varieties sampled, the staff reached a consensus that Amaou strawberries from Saitama Prefecture provided an particularly spectacular stability of sweetness and aroma.
The tasting offered a benchmark for future product improvement and helped the corporate contemplate the place to place its model in Japan’s extremely aggressive premium strawberry market.
Koga additionally expressed confidence within the high quality of Oishii Farm’s current strawberries, suggesting the corporate may compete with established Japanese manufacturers.
In March 2025, the corporate moved forward with plans to ascertain a serious analysis and improvement middle in Hamura, western Tokyo.
The web site, a big former logistics warehouse, was chosen as a strategic base for creating the following technology of plant factories and accelerating technological cooperation with Japanese producers.
Oishii Farm intends to convey collectively main Japanese firms, together with Yaskawa Electric, below an “All-Japan” initiative that mixes their experience in industrial automation, robotics and precision engineering.
The goal goes past producing strawberries or different high-value fruits. Koga desires to develop full plant manufacturing unit programs that may be manufactured in Japan and exported to international locations going through shortages of agricultural land, water and labor.
By standardizing manufacturing modules, the corporate hopes to speed up building of recent services internationally and cut back the prices of building absolutely managed farming operations.
Koga believes Japan is especially properly positioned to compete on this rising sector, doubtlessly gaining a bonus over each the United States and China by its established industrial expertise.
He sees the chance as corresponding to the event of a serious new manufacturing trade, with plant factories doubtlessly turning into an vital Japanese export alongside vehicles and industrial equipment.
The broader motion towards worthwhile, internationally aggressive Japanese agriculture can also be gaining momentum in typical farming.
Japan Agricultural Corporation, led by a younger entrepreneur with expertise at consulting agency McKinsey & Company, is pursuing a distinct technique centered on increasing exports of Japanese apples.
The firm is introducing new cultivation strategies and branding methods to promote Japanese apples in markets throughout Asia, searching for to reveal that agriculture can generate engaging returns for producers.
Its method contains creating and selling distinctive apple varieties, together with yellow apples, as a part of efforts to distinguish Japanese produce in abroad markets.
By rising profitability, the corporate additionally hopes to handle the declining variety of agricultural producers in Japan, the place an getting old workforce and a scarcity of successors have turn out to be main issues.
Together, the 2 companies illustrate totally different approaches to rebuilding the competitiveness of Japanese agriculture: Oishii Farm by superior indoor manufacturing and expertise exports, and Japan Agricultural Corporation by improved cultivation practices, branding and abroad gross sales.
For Koga, the final word ambition is to maneuver past promoting premium strawberries and set up Japan as a worldwide chief within the applied sciences that would reshape how meals is grown.
With the Tokyo analysis facility forming the inspiration of a global growth technique, Oishii Farm is positioning itself to compete for a major share of what Koga believes may turn out to be a 100 trillion yen international trade.
Source: テレ東BIZ