Drones Offer High-Tech Help to Japan’s Aging Farmers

Nileworks Inc.'s automated drone flies over rice plants, spraying pesticide while diagnosing growth of individual rice stalks, during a demonstration in Tome, Miyagi prefecture Japan on Aug. 20, 2018. Reuters/Yuka Obayashi

TOME, Japan—The next generation farmhand in Japan’s aging rural heartland may be a drone.

For several months, developers and farmers in northeast Japan have been testing a new drone that can hover above paddy fields and perform backbreaking tasks in a fraction of the time it takes for elderly farmers.