SHIMANE, Oct. 22 — Hiroyasu Hida, a 72-year-old farmer of the city of Yasugi in Shimane Prefecture, cuts grass by attaching a mower on the arm of an excavator.
The use of an excavator reduces the physical burden since a user can stay seated on a roofed seat even when working under the scorching sun.
The working time is also significantly cut to one tenth of the time needed to weed with a brush cutter.
The ridges between the fields have been widened to 2 meters to allow excavators to work on them, with the total area expanding to 5 hectares.
Hida, who manages 8 hectares of farmland in a mountainous area where rice fields spread along mountain slopes, operates excavators to weed grass on the ridges as well as crushing bamboo and other plants protruding farm roads.
He attaches to the excavator’s arm a hammer knife mower made by Sanyo Kiki Co. based in the town of Satosho in Okayama Prefecture.
The machine allows him to work safely even on steep slopes where autonomous robotic lawn mowers can’t be used, or on places with poor footing where cutting grass manually can be dangerous.
“It’s a relief because I don’t have to worry about getting my feet stuck and slipping,” Hida said.
He purchased three excavators together with two other farmers and shares them among themselves.
Previously, it took three people a whole day to weed 10 ares of land, but with excavators, the same task can now be done by one person.
The excavator arm reaches a radius of roughly 3 meters. As for slopes that are too wide for the machine to reach from the ridges, the farmers cut grass by entering the fields with excavators after the harvest is completed.
Wide field ridges are created by reducing their height from 80 centimeters to 20 centimeters, then widening them to 2 meters.
Excavators moving on the ridges help the ground strengthen, leading to less risk of crayfish and other creatures damaging the ridges and causing water leaks.
Since the excavator-mowers can crush grass and bamboo branches into pieces, the farmers no longer need to collect cut grass after weeding.
“We want to create a system in which we can continue farming while reducing physical burden,” Hida said.
An excavator equipped with a mower, used in Yasugi, Shimane Prefecture, allows weeding of steep rice terraces without the risk of slipping down.