NEC 2013 Annual Report Download - page 38

NEC aims to ensure that all people on earth are included in the digital society by helping to solve social issues
through ICT.
The section presents the challenges of resolving poverty in India, the efforts of NEC Africa (Pty) Ltd. to
tackle social issues, and solutions for managing elderly care facilities to overcome looming issues as China’s
population ages.
Japan Cloud
Air intake
Air discharge
India
Viewing the Solution of Social Issues as a Growth Opportunity,
Creating New Business Models
Water pads
Using Japanese Technology to Help Solve Poverty
in India
NEC is proceeding with trials toward commercializing an
agricultural business in India with two aims. One is to help
impoverished women in rural India to escape poverty by
generating incomes from cultivating top-quality Japanese
strawberries. The other is to establish support for agriculture
as a business for NEC.
The business partners in this initiative are the Institute of
Cultural Affairs Japan, an NPO that is helping to improve
living standards in rural India, and GRA Inc., an agricultural
production organization that helped the town of Yamamoto in
Miyagi Prefecture revive the cultivation of high-quality
strawberries by using ICT after it was devastated by the
Great East Japan Earthquake. A test facility in western India
has started steady shipments of strawberries.
As well as providing equipment, NEC is supplying
information that is essential for developing cultivation
expertise through cloud services.
Fusing Simple Production Facilities and
Advanced Cultivation Expertise
This project is using a Yamamoto strawberry variety that is
renowned for its deliciousness and high quality. The
strawberries are grown using a nutriculture system in fully
enclosed greenhouses to reduce vulnerability to disease and
insect damage and minimize the use of agrochemicals. The
greenhouses use simple cooling devices incorporating water
pads to maintain proper temperatures. Instead of soil, the
growing beds comprise coco peat, from crushed coconut
shells. A cloud service setup was deployed so villages could
swiftly obtain cultivation guidance remotely directly from
agricultural technique specialists in Yamamoto when unsure
about฀decisions฀on฀cultivation฀methods.฀Using฀cloud฀services฀
to easily link simple production facilities and advanced
cultivation expertise has enabled rural women to grow high-
quality strawberries without needing their own expertise.
Solving Social Issues While Creating New Markets
In India, agricultural produce has to go through many
intermediaries before shipping to market. Such an approach
damages a lot of produce, resulting in large distribution
losses. NEC resolved this problem by using ICT to manage
cultivation, thereby ensuring planned harvesting of produce
and stabilizing quality, and using direct contracts to enable
direct deliveries to luxury hotels in urban areas. The hotels
can thereby consistently sell fresh and tasty strawberries to
wealthy customers.
NEC derives two types of value from supporting the
development of markets for high-quality produce through its
agricultural solutions. The first is that this approach is a
means to people escaping from poverty. The second is that
creating new markets can generate new business
opportunities for NEC.
NEC will continue to focus on this project as an initiative for
creating a new business model based on special local needs.
INCLUDE฀EVERYONE฀IN฀THE฀DIGITAL฀SOCIETY
37 NEC Corporation
Annual Report 2013