Asahi Group Joins Japanese Government-Led Project to Improve Food Self-Sufficiency in the Global South
Pioneering Kenyan Rice Cultivation:Utilizing Beer Yeast Agricultural Material
(Tokyo, Japan - February 26, 2025)-Asahi Biocycle Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Asahi Group Holdings is pleased to announce its participation in a project led by the Japanese government that strives to improve global food security. As part of this effort, Asahi Biocycle will provide technological support and agricultural materials derived from surplus yeast of beer brewing to enhance rice cultivation in the Republic of Kenya. The company aims through this project to solve challenges in developing countries.
Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) has launched the Water-Saving Dry Direct-Seeding Cultivation Project to Improve Food Self-Sufficiency in the Global South. As part of this initiative, trial rice cultivation began in early February 2025 on a 160-square-meter plot in Kenya’s Mwea district, with the first harvest expected around June. By first introducing Japanese cultivation technology to several African countries, the project aims to improve global food security and ensure a more stable rice harvest across the Global South.
Water-saving dry direct seeding is a method of rice cultivation where seeds are sown in an unwatered rice field and thereafter require only a small amount of water. This method eliminates the need for the conventional steps of rice paddy preparation—watering, plowing, seedling preparation, and planting—cutting costs and labor. Moreover, it is considered a rice cultivation approach suitable for counteracting climate change, as it promises to reduce methane gas—a greenhouse gas—emissions and water consumption compared with paddy field cultivation.
Kenya has much arable land for rice cultivation, but productivity is low because of underdeveloped agricultural technology and infrastructure. The goal of developing a water-saving dry direct-seeding cultivation method in Kenya that utilizes beer yeast agricultural material is to establish low-cost, efficient rice cultivation on arable land without standing water as a contribution toward solving the global food crisis.
- The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries’ Project for Establishing a Manual of Cultivation Techniques for Paddy Rice, and Studying and Researching the Possibility for Export. The project plan was to begin proof-of-concept trials in April 2024 to establish climate change countermeasures and low-cost rice cultivation through water-saving dry direct seeding and to export the harvested rice to the Global South, including to developing countries where food supplies are in short supply.
- A new technology that makes plants healthy by reducing damage caused by climate and soil conditions through the control of non-biological stressors.