In Russia, this year it is planned to allocate more than 3 billion rubles from the budget for the digital transformation of the agro-industrial complex, Rossiyskaya Gazeta writes. At the end of last year, the Government of the Russian Federation updated the strategic direction in the field of digital transformation of the agro-industrial and fishery complexes until 2030. “Entrepreneurs will be able to take advantage of modern technologies to increase yields, optimize costs, establish distribution channels for products and gain a number of other competitive advantages for agriculture,” said Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin.
For example, in a few years it is planned to completely digitalize services for processing all types of state support. By 2026, the digitalization rate here should reach 50%, in 2027 - 75%, in 2028 - 100%. Also in March 2025, it is planned to launch into commercial operation a unified digital platform for the agro-industrial and fishery complexes. It will allow you to analyze and forecast industry indicators faster and more efficiently.
From the point of view of digitalization, priority may be given to areas of crop production and livestock production related to the reproduction of crops or livestock (seeds, breeding breeds), the press service of the ANO Digital Economy said.
Director of the Agrotech Hub of the Skolkovo biomedical cluster Natalya Chernysheva, among the promising areas of digitalization, highlights precision farming technology, which allows increasing the efficiency of crop production processes. And also integrated farm management systems, primarily for dairy farming.
“Today the level of digitalization is highest in the process industry. There the IT system is part of the equipment. Next comes livestock farming and then crop farming. In the fields there is not always access to telecommunications networks,” the expert said. However, according to her, digital technologies today exist in all areas, for example, a system for tracking the location of equipment on a field or an analytics and forecasting system for dairy farms. The latter monitors milk production and helps detect animal diseases at early stages.
“According to our data, the majority of agribusiness companies consider the main goals of digitalization to be optimizing resource costs, reducing the risk of unexpected breakdowns of machinery and equipment, and increasing production efficiency,” said Alexander Eder, director of business development in the agro-industrial complex of K2Tech.
For example, to optimize work in the field, farmers use an agroanalytical system; for the efficient functioning of the elevator, an IoT platform is being implemented that allows taking into account the entire production range and tracking its movement.
The plant and warehouses use technical document flow, operational planning and process management systems (APS, MES), warehouse management system (WMS), industrial analytical platform (BI), etc.
The strategic direction of digital transformation of the agro-industrial complex, updated by the government of the Russian Federation, involves, in particular, the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) and other latest technologies into work and management processes. They can be used in automatic irrigation systems, for cultivating fields with unmanned vehicles, and for collecting satellite data on the condition of the soil.
“AI technologies can be applied almost everywhere in agriculture. They provide the main effect when processing a large volume of multidirectional data. For example, in the case of a field, these are the parameters of the soil, weather, and a specific crop. All of them change quite dynamically, and this must be taken into account in order to make the optimal decision,” says Chernysheva.
The same, according to the expert, applies to livestock farming, where it is necessary to take into account indicators of animal health, climate inside the farm, feed composition, etc.
“AI technologies should be implemented throughout the entire cycle of creation and processing of products, for example, digital platforms for integrated management of agribusiness using Big Data, monitoring of farmland and livestock processes using computer vision, drones and IoT, image analytics of remote sensing of the earth, autonomous agricultural machinery,” noted in the ANO “Digital Economy”.
If we talk about what is already being used, then a study conducted by ANO revealed the presence of effective domestic solutions with AI in processes such as livestock breeding (including monitoring its condition, feed supply and milking), purchasing raw materials, soil analysis, and fertilizing and watering, resource and crop accounting, personnel management, business process control, agricultural planning, etc.
A study by Yakov and Partners notes that expanding activities to introduce digital technologies is one of the most effective ways to increase the efficiency of the agro-industrial complex. According to analysts, by 2030, digitalization could provide an increase in labor productivity in Russian agriculture by 15.6% (cumulative total), increase production volumes by 3-55% depending on the type of enterprise, with reduce production costs by 5-20% and bring in an additional 800 billion rubles. annually.
ANO “Digital Economy” noted that the effect of digitalization of the agro-industrial complex for the state will be to ensure the country’s food security, increase GDP, and increase labor productivity in agriculture. Thanks to new technologies, business can increase productivity, reduce costs for quality management and control of technological processes, and increase the transparency of business processes.
“According to our calculations, with the help of information technology it is possible to reduce the cost of seeding material by up to 25% and at the same time increase yield by 10%,” said Eder. “In the dairy industry, digital solutions make it possible to increase the milk productivity of the herd, reduce farm maintenance costs, improve product quality and reduce its cost by 20-30%.”
According to the expert, IT solutions help monitor and control all stages of production “from field to shelf.” In addition, digital platforms help connect regional agricultural producers with buyers both within the country and abroad, which creates new opportunities for the development of entrepreneurship in the agricultural sector.
Nowadays, the issue of import substitution—the introduction of Russian digital technologies—is also becoming relevant. There are domestic solutions, and they are now being actively developed and implemented by various market players, Chernysheva noted. “An example is the domestic product Milk 2.0, which can replace the foreign dairy farm management system DairyComp. Our developer, the PLINOR company, received a grant to refine this system and pilot its implementation,” said the expert.
