Series

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGYHigh Performance
Soil to Transition
Global Agriculture
and Realize SpaceFarming
A Japanese company has succeeded in creating soil that is suitable for farming in a very short period of time. The technology enables environmentally friendly agriculture in areas with low-quality soil and in future could be applied togrow crops on the surface of the Moon.

SASAKI TAKASHI

A

s food crises caused by abnormal weather and other factors
worsen globally, the realization of sustainable agriculture
has become an important issue. It isrecognized that farming can negativelyaffect the environment when chemicalfertilizers are frequently used in the pur-High performance soil
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suit of high productivity. The impact ofagriculturally derived greenhouse gases
is also regarded as an issue. High performance soil created by Nishida Kohei,
CEO of TOWING, Inc., and his employees has gained attention as one potential
solution to these issues.
“To create the high performance soil,

we use a technique that is very similar tosakei production,” says Nishida. “In sakeproduction, two processes—saccharification (conversion to sugar), whereby
starch is broken down into sugar, andfermentation, whereby sugar is broken
down to become alcohol—occur in parallel through the activity of microorganisms. Through these processes, sake canbe made readily and efficiently. In thesame way, high performance soil is created by having various microorganisms
working on the soil material at the sametime. We can efficiently create quality soil in one month when it normally
would take three to five years.”
The basic technology adding andestablishing soil microbes onto a porous
materialii to produce high performancesoil was developed by the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization(NARO), an organization dedicated toscientific research related to agriculture.
Nishida, who was a graduate student in
the Nagoya University Graduate Schoolof Environmental Studies, started a teamwith members of his laboratory in 2016 todevelop and commercialize this technol-

Conceptual drawing of farming on the lunar surface
ogy. After graduating, he founded TOWING, Inc. in 2020 and worked to makethe technology practical. His company
also succeeded in developing high performance biochar by combining its own
unique technology with technology fromthe aforementioned agricultural researchorganization. Various microorganisms
are simultaneously activated while thishigh performance biochar is mixed into

Green peppers grown using highperformance soil
soil with organic fertilizer. It is thenpossible to create a bacterial flora thatsmoothly decomposes organic nitrogenand other components of organic fertilizers into nutrients that plants can absorb,
resulting in the creation of high quality
soil in an extremely short period of time.
“The high performance biochar isa porous material made from carbonized plant residue (rice husks, bamboo,etc.), livestock manure, sewage sludge,
and so on, and the numerous tiny holes
on its surface become the microorganisms’ ‘homes’ so to speak,” says Nishida.
“However, these homes are not only for
microorganisms that work to improve
the soil, but can also be inhabited by useless microorganisms. Through repeatedtrial and error over years, we conducted
microorganism culture examinations
so that only the microorganisms that
promote soil improvement settle to thematerial.”
TOWING, Inc. has partnerships withJapan Agricultural Cooperatives (JA)across the country, as well as with agribusiness companies in the United States,
Brazil, and southeast Asia, and they havebegun to work to improve soil in agricultural areas by replacing it with high performance soil.
In agricultural land with improved
soil, farmers are able to ensure sufficientyield without the use of chemical fertilizers. They are also able to reduce carbon
dioxide (CO2) emissions since rice husks,
coconut shells, and other plant residue
normally disposed of or incinerated isused as a material for the high performance biochar. And as biochar storescarbon within the soiliii, it effectively
removes CO2 without being released intothe atmosphere. These results have beenhighly acclaimed both within Japan andabroad, and in 2022 the soil was awarded
the Minister of Education, Culture,Sports, Science and Technology Award
as part of the STI for SDGs, a program torecognize efforts to solve social issues
using STI (science, technology and innovation) conducted by the Japan Scienceand Technology Agency.
Currently, in addition to improving
farmland soil, TOWING, Inc. is working
on a space farming project called “Soranou.” The Artemis programiv, driven
primarily by NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), aims tobuild a manned lunar base and expand
to Mars, and food security has become an
unavoidable issue. TOWING, Inc. is partof a JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration
Agency) working group within
the Artemis program that aims
to utilize artificial soil in space.
As sending food and soil tospace from Earth is extremely
costly, using lunar soil to cultivate crops would be the ideal
way to sustain human activity
on the lunar surface over a long
period of time. But the par-Nishida Kohei, CEO of TOWING, Inc.
ticles of sand covering the surface of theMoon are extremely fine and are difficult
for microorganisms to inhabit. TOWING,
Inc. is working on research to make lunar
sand into a suitable soil for the cultivation of crops. By establishing farms on
the lunar surface using artificial soil, it
would become possible to grow crops
on the Moon that can also be consumed
there.
The technology to produce high performance soil will be a major force inrealizing sustainable agriculture on
Earth, and it has the potential to allow
for space farming away from Earth, starting with the Moon.

Crop cultivation using highperformance soil

i Sake is a Japanese alcoholic drink made by fermenting rice.
ii A porous material is a material with numerous tiny holes.
iii The carbon left in biochar created by thermally decomposing plant residue and other biomass contains properties that make it difficult to be decomposed by soil
microbes. This is why using biochar with soil locks the carbon into the soil.
iv A manned lunar exploration program which aims to build a base on the lunar surface by 2028.
All photos and image: Courtesy of TOWING, Inc.

JANUARY 2023

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