World meat industry news

Advanced methods of protection in crop production can become a guarantor of the sustainable development of the industry.

Today, soil resources are most important for ensuring food security, so the paradigm of sustainable development in the agricultural sector is becoming more relevant than ever. Oleg Kobyakov, director of the FAO Russia Liaison Office, said this during a seminar on the sustainability of crop production. According to him, the area of world arable land is shrinking every year.

When choosing sustainable development practices in the agro-industrial complex, companies are primarily interested in whether it will be beneficial for them. This opinion was voiced during the seminar by Konstantin Ivanov, Head of the Department for Government Relations and International Activities at Uralchem. He noted that now the work of companies in this area is influenced by three types of conditions: opportunistic and political, economic and technological.

It is important for companies to understand that the implementation of ESG principles will allow them to achieve economic benefits in the form of cost reduction or increase in profits. “In my opinion, only business factors will affect whether sustainable agriculture is profitable. This is happening not only in Russia, but all over the world,” Ivanov said. According to him, supercycles of commodities are now “looming on the horizon”.

Biotechnologies and digital technologies are the main directions in the development of agriculture, including sustainable agriculture, Ivanov is sure. In his opinion, the main challenge of the next five years will be working with digital data. “In our opinion, the main money will be there. Not even in the provision of the services themselves,” he says.

Nadezhda Orlova, Head of the Innovation Economics Department at the Institute for Agricultural Research at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, said that in terms of developing digital platforms for agriculture, Russia is following the global course. “At first, sustainable development companies around the world created their platforms, and now it brings together 100-200 thousand participants at the country level. I think we will come to the same platforms, because until this movement is massive, there will be no efficiency,” she said.

According to Anton Pushkarev, head of sustainable business development at Syngenta, the company has been engaged in sustainable development since the time when this issue was not so relevant. So, Syngenta has departments that specialize in testing hybrids and plant protection products, technical support for customers and digital development, which covers more than 25 million hectares - this is a service for remote monitoring of the condition of crops. “When we looked at all the elements, it became obvious that they were all related to the soil. Either they are the cause of a certain state of the soil, or a consequence. Both the selection of the correct crop rotation, and the optimal choice of the predecessor crop, and the selection of the variety, the correct choice of plant protection products and fertilizers are factors that affect the condition of the soil. And it is the main tool in ensuring food security,” Pushkarev stressed.

Agroholding "Step" actively implements innovative technologies that are tools for sustainable development and help in efficient and balanced business, reducing costs. The director of the R&D center of the agricultural holding Sergey Kosogor noted that the introduction of innovative technologies is possible not only with the automation / mechanization of individual stages of production and the use of information technologies, but also at the level of bioengineering, for example, breeding crops that independently absorb nitrogen, are resistant to drought, or deciphering the genome pathogens to disable their protection. This will make it possible to actively use biological plant protection products, reduce the amount of fertilizer application, rationally use moisture, etc. “Thus, advanced methods of protection in crop production can become a guarantor of the sustainable development of the industry, ensure its biologization and help reduce the likelihood of crop loss,” he is sure .