Prospects for “Smart Agriculture” in Russia

Abstract

The authors justify the use of precision agriculture as a key vector in the development of the “smart agriculture” segment of the FoodNet platform of the national technological initiative. A prospectless extensive agriculture, based on exploitation of natural soil fertility, prevails in Russia; therefore, perennial field research has highlighted the economic and ecological advisability of using the information technologies of precision agriculture. Against the background of a significant increase in crop yields, the payback on fertilizers and plant-protecting agents increased 1.5–1.7 times; the agrochemical load on the environment decreased by 35–60%; and the quality of crop production improved noticeably. The transition to new crop production technologies is justified. Attention is paid to the need to create a domestic physicotechnical and software–hardware basis for precision agriculture, its absence being a major hindrance to the development of “smart agriculture” in Russia.