Agriculture in a digital era: threats and solutions

The need for digitalization of the agro-industrial complex is obvious – implementation of digital economy principles will create an institutional environment that meets modern realities and allows to generally improve production efficiency. Foreign experience of agriculture digitalization in the USA, Germany, Switzerland, and Ireland has been analysed in the article. Main technologies used for agro-industrial complex digitalization have been described. Advantages and potential of the smart farming implementation to control the accuracy of fertilizer application, prediction of adverse environmental events, quality improve of growing products and more open interaction between farmers and consumers, resource costs reduction and increase of farms profitability have been considered. Opportunities and obstacles for implementing technologies of the state project “Digital Agriculture” have been evaluated: big data, blockchain, smart farming, quantum technologies, Internet of things, robotics, wireless communications, virtual and augmented realities. Ingeneral the main obstacles are related to high cost of introducing new technologies, lack of necessary knowledge among farmers, lack of legal framework and standards, and lack of information and software protection mechanism. Barriers and their potential solutions in the process of agriculture digitalization in Russia have been defined in the article. Main solutions to overcome the barriers described include: favorable regulatory environment for digital agriculture development, information and economic security of agricultural producers, nationwide information and communication infrastructure for the industry (including provision of public services on the basis of a single cloud platform), necessary training for “intellectual” agriculture, implementation of digital technologies in related industries, development of the agricultural digital enterprise concept and the way of its implementation.