Smart Farming Club in Russia to promote digitization

"The main goals of the club are to eliminate problematic points in the processes of digitization of the agricultural industry in Russia as well as to share experience for the formation of global trends in the technological development of agriculture," comments Bjoerne Drechsler, chairman of the SFC and member of the board of Ekotechnika AG. "We expect that the work of such an expert platform uniting both agricultural producers and providers of ‘smart’ solutions for agribusiness will accelerate the spread of new digital solutions in agriculture and make agricultural production more efficient."

In addition to major agricultural producers companies that develop solutions in the field of agricultural automatization and the development of smart farming applications have also joined. So far, the club has more than 50 members and, according to the organizers, the total number will exceed 1,000 members from Russia, the CIS and other countries.

The Smart Farming Club should become not only a platform for the exchange of experience and knowledge transfer. In the future the club may engage in the development of standards and regulations in the field of digitization and automatization of agriculture as well as the preparation of proposals for the design of legal frameworks for regulation in this area.

Other promising directions of SFC activity could be analytical and research activities as well as consulting on digitization issues, both on specific technical solutions and on various projects involving large-scale implementation of IT solutions in agricultural production.

"Many members of the SFC now have relevant experience," emphasizes Bjoerne Drechsler. "And this is not about automating standard business processes such as accounting or payroll, but about automating the core business of agricultural operations. For example, Ekotechnika is already using the technology of autonomous control of grain harvesters and this year will actively engage in the installation, commissioning and support of such autonomous systems at its customers in 35 regions of Russia."

The current members of the Smart Farming Club have a combined total of 2.6 million hectares of agricultural land. The total annual turnover of the club members is more than 500 billion rubles.