Despite all the difficulties, digitalization in the agro-industrial complex is underway. Kristina Romanovskaya, General Director of the agroholding "Lazarevskoye Breeding Farm", said that the company has developed a long-term digitalization plan.
"We started with management spain whatsapp resource accounting and agronomy, and are gradually digitizing warehouses, a pig farm, a cattle farm, and a meat processing plant. The two largest projects are crop monitoring using an unmanned aerial vehicle and a startup for non-invasive weighing of pigs. We launched a domestic vertical takeoff and landing agrodrone together with Innopolis University for geoscouting. The drone has high autonomy - it flies for up to five hours on one tank of fuel with a payload in the form of a camera, covering approximately 100 square kilometers per flight. The technology involves the integration of various payloads popular on the market - lidars, multispectral cameras, thermal imagers, and various geodetic equipment. The starting price of the new device is 4.9 million rubles, the acquisition of the Lazarevskoye agroholding cost 10 million rubles. In the future, we are considering purchasing agrodrones for treating fields with plant protection products," said Kristina Romanovskaya.
In addition to digitalization, the agroholding is developing the digital service Pig scale. It is being developed by the company's subsidiary, Lazarevskoye Tech LLC. According to Kristina Romanovskaya, the application analyzes data related to the population, animal behavior, and weight gain schedule.
Some agro-industrial complex companies have been digitalizing for a long time. Andrey Neduzhko, CEO of JSC Agroholding Steppe, said that the company has been implementing digital developments since its creation.
"We use digital tools at all stages of agricultural production - from crop rotation planning to harvesting and accounting. For several years now, the agricultural holding has had a center that develops new production technologies, agricultural machinery and digital equipment, and collaborates with universities and research institutes. The company implements machine vision to analyze crops in fields, uses a digital analytical model to calculate the structure of sown areas, the marginality of production processes, creates digital twins of fields, and much more. In 2024, Steppe launched a project to manufacture parts using 3D printing on the basis of the agricultural holding," said Andrey Neduzhko.
In his opinion, all areas of the agro-industrial complex have the same problems of digitalization: personnel shortage, difficulties with training and retraining of personnel who have not previously worked with digital tools. The departure of foreign contractors and suppliers of digital technologies for agriculture from the Russian market may also play a significant role.
"Digitalization in the Steppe agroholding is at a high level. The plans include scaling up the implementation of high-tech systems at all stages of production," concluded Andrey Neduzhko.