Is Ukrainian agribusiness ready to make their farming digital? Will it become «Agriculture 4.0.»? To understand the future, we need to look at the real state of things.
Shock!
Precision agriculture provides the division of fields on management zones, which have homogeneous specific features, moreover the most important criterion, which determines economic potential of zone or field – is a soil type. But outdated and non-objective information on the actual state of soils in Ukraine is shocking.
Today, there is absent the digital information about agrichemical properties of Ukrainian soils. The main mapping resource of information about soil coverage is soil research materials, which were conducted in 1957-1961 years, at the time of Khrushchev. Taking into account, that topicality of soil research materials are getting lost in 15-20 years, the term of soil map has already expired.
Moreover, according to the Method of expert monetary valuation of land plots, when comparing prices of the sale of land under the farming land taking into account such quality indicators as fertility and soil state, which are determined through their growth class. And this issue especially sharply sounds, in the view of the perspectives of land market opening.
The last time the real bonitating of soils in Ukraine was carried out in … 1993. Soil bonitating works of farmland were conducted in accordance with the Soil bonitating method of 1992. The bonitating objects have considered the units of soil coverage, which highlighted on the soil maps and united into the farm productive groups in accordance with the “Nomenclature list of agro-industrial groups of soils of the Ukrainian SSR” (Kyiv, 1978).
So we have to admit, Ukrainian agro-industrial complex goes to digital era with soil maps of Khrushchev’s times, bonitating data of the beginning of ’90s and the outdated methods.
Fact: today, there is absent data about the real state of soil coverage and the level of their fertility ass the main tool for objective quality assessment and land cost.
Chernozem or innovation?
While precision agriculture was implementing in the world counties, Ukrainian agrarians were getting the profit due to highly fertile soils, but not effective farming. In the USA, for example, the elements of precision agriculture are used by more than 80% of farmers. That’s why the digital farming – is simply the next step of development, obvious and understandable process to which they are ready both technologically and mentally.
If Ukraine won’t decide the action about the implementation of innovation in the domestic agro complex, then abyss in development will be too large, and today’s competitors in the international agro-market will become unattainable.
When we are talking about the competitiveness of Ukrainian agribusiness, but not separate farm companies, we have to understand – the process of digitization in farming has to be big-scaled. And without state support, there is no way to do this. And this is a problem.
The state program of digitization of agroindustrial complex
There is absent such kind of program…. There is no initiative of implementing digital technologies into the farming on the state level. And is this in the country, which moves to the direction of land market opening?
We need to start at least form the basic things or first steps of digitization, but for today it is absent precision geospatial data and actual land-use state, cultivated soils, boundaries of plots in kind and their intended use throughout Ukraine, which complicates the state control over the use and protection of land, also preconditions of regular monitoring of land and soil quality are absent.
And don’t try to shift the absence of desire to change something to the absence of economic opportunities. For example Kazakhstan: digitization was carried out on each field on the state level, each field is available on the State base now. As a result, there is a clear understanding of each agribusiness or farmer: where the field is situated, accurate boundaries, precision square, and crops. Today the digitization of field properties is implemented in Kazakhstan to increase the effectiveness of crop growing and control of the state of soil quality indicators. This is a real care about the effective development agroindustrial complex and saving of land fund.
Therefore we need to understand: the digital era is already on the threshold. In order to survive in the new conditions on the global market, we must resolutely change our approaches to agriculture: both at the state level and at the level of each company. The history doesn’t forgive the procrastination.
