IT use in agriculture: A comparative study between Japan and Australia

In industrialized countries such as Japan and Australia, information technology (IT) is widely used in agriculture. It is hard to generalize for each country as a whole. However, in this paper we have identified some major differences in IT use in agriculture for these two countries. IT is more commonly used in Australia than Japan. Computer ownership by farmers is 25-50% in Australia and 18% in Japan. In both countries, governmental organizations provide information and databases through computer networks, but especially in Japan, these systems are mostly exclusive to authorized persons. These differences arise from national characteristics, that is: Japan is less commercialized in information services, less individualized, more hierarchial and more bureaucratic than Australia. Recently, participative approaches are emerging, where organizations, communities and individuals have started to work together in providing IT services in both coutries. These approaches became more feasible with the introduction of the Internet. As realized from this example, the Internet, which is a truly democratic network, has the potential power to improve the cooperative activities in agriculture, and to alter the directions of the flow of information.