Shotaro Umeda

Papers

Total Citations

102

H-Index

About

Shotaro Umeda is a leading voice in the intersection of agricultural economics and smart technology, with a focused expertise on precision farming and labor optimization in Japanese rice production. His research critically evaluates the economic viability and operational efficiency of emerging agricultural technologies, particularly unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) and automated pest-control systems. Umeda’s major contributions lie in quantifying the real-world trade-offs between cost, workload, and performance when adopting smart agriculture tools. His seminal 2021 paper, “Evaluating Farm Management Performance by the Choice of Pest-Control Sprayers,” which has garnered 74 citations, provides a rigorous framework for comparing traditional and drone-based spraying methods, directly informing policy and investment decisions for Japan’s aging farming workforce. Building on this, his 2022 study on agricultural drone sprayers (28 citations) offers a granular cost and workload assessment, demonstrating how IoT and AI can alleviate severe labor shortages. By bridging engineering innovation with practical farm management, Umeda’s work is essential reading for researchers and students interested in the sustainable transformation of agriculture through data-driven decision-making.