World meat industry news

According to experts from the North-West Center for Strategic Research Foundation, the average annual growth rate of AI in agriculture in the next few years (until 2025) will be 25%. The use of agricultural drones - 22%, cloud technologies - 12% and the Internet of things - 10%. For comparison, traditional areas of the agro-industrial complex, such as livestock farming, crop farming and fish farming, will grow by no more than 5%.

Advanced intelligent technologies, including digital and AI solutions, are the basis for the transition to a new, more efficient model of industry management, the report says. The previous breakthrough, which occurred in the second half of the 20th century, became possible thanks to the development of more productive plant varieties, the development of the production of fertilizers and pesticides, the development of new irrigation systems and the introduction of mechanical equipment. But they have exhausted their potential - the industry needs new solutions.

“Artificial intelligence technologies will help make a new industry shift in agriculture, increasing its productivity manifold by optimizing the use of resources, improving the efficiency (productivity) of agricultural activities and automating tasks. The widespread use of smart solutions in agriculture will help ensure biosafety and increase the sustainability and environmental friendliness of production,” comments Marina Lipetskaya, director of the North-West Center for Social Development.

As part of the report, experts identified three key solutions that will bring closer the large-scale use of AI technologies in the Russian agro-industrial complex.

The first is a new model of personnel training. Today, basic programs and the existing system of agricultural education do not correspond to the place of the agricultural sector in the country’s economy. Despite the fact that universities produce a sufficient number of personnel - about 50 thousand within the framework of higher and secondary vocational education. Many are leaving the industry - from 2018 to 2020, almost 36% of graduates of higher education in the field of agriculture, forestry, and fisheries worked outside their specialty, and 51% of graduates of secondary vocational education. Among the possible reasons for the shortage of personnel, experts cite the decline in the prestige of agricultural professions and living in rural areas, the conservatism of the agricultural educational system and the low “fixation rate” of graduates in the industry.

A promising mechanism for personnel development could be the creation of model colleges: educational organizations created in partnership with leading industry representatives in the region

“Involving business in the research and educational process will allow educational programs to keep pace with the real sector of the economy and retain personnel in the industry,” the report says.

The second is the integration of industry players from different spheres - science, education, business, government - for the emergence of partnerships in the intellectual agro-industrial complex. One of the forms could be a digital platform, which is created with the aim of strengthening the cooperation of all “innovators” and introducing the results of innovative activities in agriculture. Such solutions contribute to the development and emergence of new frontier projects in the field of artificial intelligence in the agricultural sector. Among the already working solutions in Russia, for example, is the “RSHB in Digital” platform, launched in 2022.

The third is to stimulate experimental interdisciplinary projects at the intersection of AI and agriculture. According to experts, this is one of the tools for transitioning to the next technological stage of industry development. For the last few years, a competition for grant support for breakthrough ideas of young scientists, Blue Sky Research, has been held in Russia. Currently, a hundred scientists are participating in it, but to create significant breakthroughs, there must be more such initiatives in the country.

The following technologies are of greatest interest to the agricultural sector today: “smart” crop production - soil condition monitoring, yield forecasts and automated harvesting; “smart” livestock farming - livestock condition monitoring, automated milking; precision agriculture - smart irrigation systems, disease and pest control, precision breeding and city farming; intelligent inventory management system and smart logistics.