In Japan, Doing More With Less Means Getting a Robot to Milk Your Cows

National push for automation reaches farms, as human workforce heads out to pasture

Labor shortage and low productivity were threatening the future of the Kato farm, on the Japanese island of Hokkaido. That was until the Kato family invested $2 million in robots that milk cows while offering them tasty treats. Photo/Video: Karan Deep Singh/WSJ
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OBIHIRO, Japan—It’s milking time at the Kato farm, but when a Holstein ambles into the milking pen, nobody is there. A robot shoots out four arms and attaches a suction tube to each teat while she enjoys a tasty treat. Within 10 minutes, it is the next cow’s turn.

The Kato family invested about $2 million to build a shed that relies on a pair of $230,000 robots to milk some 90 cows and an $18,000 robot to help feed them. Here on the northern island of Hokkaido, whose flat farmlands laid out in neat grids resemble Wisconsin...