In a country where aging rural populations and shrinking farm workforces have long shadowed the fields, Japan has chosen a stretch of Hokkaido's vast Tokachi plain as the place where the future of farming will be tested. Nineteen municipalities now carry the designation of national strategic special zones, granting autonomous tractors and pesticide drones the legal room to operate in ways previously forbidden — a quiet but consequential reordering of who, and what, tends the land. It is the first time Japan has carved out regulatory space specifically for AI-powered agriculture, and the govern