Natalia Chernysheva, Director of the AgroTech Hub at the Skolkovo

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he main direction in the agro-tech industry will be the technological toolkit of agriculture. First of all, according to the speakers, there will be a move towards strong artificial intelligence (AI). In addition, blockchain technologies will come to the industry, thanks to which the principle of traceability and transparency in agriculture and the stability of food chains will be supported. Big data will also make a significant contribution, which will become a new production factor along with land, capital, and labor resources.

"Based on the results of dominican republic whatsapp resource the venture market and communication with startups and agricultural holdings, we can conclude that agriculture is improving. AI is increasingly penetrating the sphere. The same can be said about blockchain technologies. They are used to track supply chains, especially over long distances. A very important trend is the self-sufficiency of agricultural holdings. Innovation and expertise centers are being formed. A startup is no longer the only source of agricultural innovation, and large holdings are starting to form divisions of IT centers," noted Natalia Mendus, Managing Director for Work with Startups at Rosselkhozbank.

Innovation Center, spoke about the industry support measures: "We have two main government support measures. Under the first, we allocate 800 million rubles for the implementation of large projects to introduce digital solutions into the industry. We give money only to particularly significant projects that have been approved by the Industrial Competence Centers (ICC) under the Ministry of Agriculture of the Russian Federation. The second support measure was created for AI projects. In 2023, we supported the Rassvet agro-industrial holding and the Bashinformsvyaz company. In 2024, applications for this support measure were accepted. It is very transparent and understandable. Applications can be submitted until June 24, 2024."

Anna Kudinova, Executive Director of IT Sphere LLC, believes that big data not only benefits the industry, but also slows down production: "The trend towards big data is developing and growing very strongly. But in practice, nothing has changed. Previously, farmers were not forced to report electronically. They had enough spreadsheets in Excel, which they understood perfectly well. But as soon as there were many more forms, reports, data that needed to be taken into account everywhere, there were also more errors, fines, problems that needed to be worked on longer. Farmers' heads are exploding, and they still need to do something in the fields. But all data can be divided into several types. The first can be obtained without a person - from satellites or sensors. The second - with the help of a person, and they may contain errors that need to be cleaned. The third type is data that can be synthesized and restored. And in the latter case, the use of AI technologies is more justified than in the first two options only because it is faster and cheaper."

Co-founder and CEO of the company developing technologies and equipment for vertical farming, iFarm, Alexander Lyskovsky, spoke about interaction with clients: "We had an idea that people would not participate in growing plants on site. There is a large robotic box, and it grows several tons of berries and vegetables. Then we conduct experiments in the labs, where people plant plants, watch them grow, water them. And now we have started doing this on clients' farms. That is, we launch an experiment on the client's farm, grow plants, collect big data and process them. Thanks to this, we can conduct more experiments not by human hands, but for free on clients' farms. In return, they receive improved technical maps that we give them. Thanks to this, the yield has doubled over the past three years. That is, we collect twice as much harvest from the same area."