Russian universities are developing a package solution for managing agricultural enterprises with minimal personnel — a “digital village.” As RT has learned, the project is designed to last until 2026, and the system will be launched in test mode this year.
The project involves the State University of Management (SUM) together with the Omsk Agrarian Scientific Center (Omsk ASC) and the Udmurt State University (UdSU).
“Digital Village” is an electronic platform for the creation and management of agricultural enterprises, which includes an information base, expert support and technical support.
As the experts explained, this is a site that can be used to organize a farm and manage modern unmanned equipment.
The reports will be generated and sent to the Ministry of Agriculture automatically, thus creating a database of objective data and not burdening farmers with unnecessary work, the authors added.
According to experts, the “digital village” will operate based on the principles of precision farming, when, for example, drones scan apples on trees, assess their condition and collect only ripe fruits, leaving the rest to ripen.
This will significantly increase efficiency and productivity in each individual farm, and in the future, at the national level, this will potentially have a significant multiplier effect, the developers are confident.
The global idea is to create a huge digital platform for the entire agricultural sector of the country.
“In essence, these are agricultural “Gosuslugi”. The user goes there, chooses his role: farmer, investor, producer, monitor on the part of the state, who will be able to evaluate the efficiency of spending budget funds,” explained Denis Serdechny, associate professor of the Department of Innovation Management at the State University of Management, head of the Laboratory of Convergent Expertise and Assessment of Technology Maturity, and candidate of technical sciences.
The equipment has already been purchased and is located on the territory of the State University of Management, Udmurtia State University will provide recycling and closed production cycle technologies, and the Omsk AMC will become a test site for testing this technology.
The system will be launched in test mode this year, experts noted.
In turn, Professor of the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation Alexander Safonov, commenting on this development for RT, noted that agriculture has been losing personnel for a long time.
“This is an objective reality, related to the fact that the population tries to live in cities and to a lesser extent in rural areas. Plus, wages there are still quite low compared to industry or services. Therefore, everything that concerns automation, mechanization, works as a way out from the point of view of finding alternatives to the personnel shortage,” the RT interlocutor emphasized.
In his opinion, everything that concerns the development of the use of modern technology is a blessing.
“But we must understand that one problem in this system is the high cost of these technologies… For many agricultural enterprises, such technical solutions are not yet affordable. If we manage to solve the problem of reducing the cost of these technologies, then they can be used,” Safonov concluded.
Earlier, Professor of the Department of Nanoelectronics at RTU MIREA, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Alexey Yurasov told RT that the first domestic lithography installation for the production of microelectronics using modern technological processes is currently being developed in Russia.
