What kind of automation dream of agribusiness in Russia

Perhaps you will create your own startup by learning what problems farmers are concerned about.

Building a business in the field of agriculture is a task with an asterisk. There are enough risk factors: weather, difficulties with long-term planning, lack of infrastructure. To some extent, automation helps to cope with them. We decided to find out how the Russian agribusiness is doing with it: to do this, we talked with representatives of various fields – a winemaker, a cheese maker, owners of livestock farms and the director of an ornamental plant nursery.

What technology is your business lacking right now?

He founded the winery in 2008. On an area of ​​12.5 hectares, the entrepreneur grows 12 European grape varieties. In year UPPA Winery produces 50-60 thousand bottles of wine. The company employs 30 people, and Pavel himself, as the owner, plays the role of the chief winemaker and agronomist.

We can’t just rely on nature. Every year we cut up to 90% of the future harvest (so that the berries get the required amount of sugar), this is total work and unpredictability, given that each variety ripens at different times and requires a different approach. To understand when it is time to cut the vines and harvest, statistics from past years helps. And if in regions where winemaking traditions have existed for five or six centuries, this knowledge has been accumulated by trial and error, then we, unfortunately, do not have such statistics.

Weather stations that collect data on temperature, soil moisture, wind strength and other characteristics in a particular area would be useful to us.

For example, the north and south slopes may receive different amounts of light. We need sensors that collect information about the state of each bush, and also programs that will process this data, display dependencies and predict the development of the situation.

I would like to automate the measurement of the size of the berries. Doing it manually is long and hard.

The fact is that the aroma of wine depends on the moment at which we harvest. While sugar accumulates in the berry, it grows and changes color. Then the limit comes, and the grapes decrease in size, losing water. If we harvest when the growth of the berry has just stopped, we will get a wine with a bright smell of red berries. And if we wait, then the aromatic profile will shift towards black and boiled berries.

An electronic agronomist would also be useful, accumulating information about each vine.

We shoot the entire vineyard from the drone and assign coordinates to each vine. We update the data regularly, and let the program analyze them. And then the grower, having come to the field and pointing the scanner at a specific vine, will receive complete information about it: there are such and such problems, but this one needs to be cut differently – and then another tool should be disinfected. After all, when you have thousands of vines, and you write down all the information about them on separate pieces of paper, you can never take into account all the factors.

Nursery grows avenue deciduous trees and shrubs, conifers, as well as fruit and berry and flower crops. Plants are used for private projects and in the development of microdistricts. There are about 40 thousand trees in the nursery, 10 thousand are sold every year.

Alley trees grow for a long time – from 4 to 5 years. During this time, you need to collect data and make decisions based on it. We stored this information in Excel files, but the data was constantly lost, and there was no single picture.

In 2019, they began to make a passport for each tree and collect information in a single register.

Now, when planning a project for next year, I see the size and characteristics of the trees in every field and every row. This means that I can accurately calculate how much of this or that material to dig out without damage. Thanks to this automation, you can be very flexible and make decisions quickly. Probably, in the first season we understand very clearly who, what and why should do in the kennel. Such automation could certainly be useful to other farms, taking into account their needs.

“Milashais located near Lake Baikal. They produce 26 types of cheese according to European recipes. In 2022, 8 tons of products were produced here.

If you constantly increase the number of employees, then any increase in revenue will simply be eaten away by labor costs. The key factor for us is the price. We can dream about a lot, but often allow ourselves much less. So first of all, we look at what we can pull financially.

We mainly invest in the purchase of equipment.

At first we only had a cheese bath – it stirs the milk and allows the cheese maker not to stand for three hours with a spoon near the pan. Then we purchased a cooler tank. Now you no longer need to rush to production after buying milk in order to have time to process raw materials in 4 hours, until nothing turns sour. Then we bought a pan-washing machine that washes basins and plastic molds of grease, which saves us an hour and a half every day. We also took cheese presses to make large heads weighing up to 20 kilograms. Previously, you had to use either dumbbells from gyms or large water bottles – both of which are extremely inconvenient.

Farming BeefStory six years. It produces marbled beef, steaks, semi-finished meat products and delicacies. Livestock – 600 heads. The farm also grows agricultural feed and covers 80% of its needs for it.

We need precision farming tools to reduce the cost of animal feed.

Automation helps to collect and analyze data, introduce new products and equipment step by step – in order to more efficiently cultivate fields, apply fertilizers and plant protection products.

We are also interested in services for compiling a diet.

It would be particularly helpful if they analyzed nutrition and suggested balanced diets, taking into account the individual needs of each animal.

small farm in the Dmitrovsky district of the Moscow region. They breed alpacas, llamas, sheep and Scottish cows, sell their wool, and also conduct tours of the farm.

We try our best to make everything possible. For example, in the cold season it is difficult to find juicy and fresh greens, so we ourselves assembled a plant for germinating barley and wheat.

In the installation, everything is automated: both watering and air supply. We just have to load the seed tray, and then pull out the feed tray. We could produce more installations for other farms, but we realized that this is not relevant – our people do not bother much with feeding animals.

Previously, we manually recorded those who wanted to walk around the farm, but now all excursions are booked through the service.

At first they wanted to make their own system, but its cost varies from 500 thousand to 2.5 million rubles. As a result, we chose the Bukza company – they have the coolest functionality I have ever seen. But it can still be improved. For example, to cancel or reschedule a reservation, the user must write to me. It would be better if he could go into his personal account and do it himself.

What kind of work are you ready to entrust to a machine, and what – only to a person?

Alexander Belous: Absolutely without a person in agriculture – nowhere. We have automated everything related to the collection and processing of information. You can collect data and calculate, but I still need a person who will use it: go to the field, check everything, plant or dig a plant.

Nikita Rossov: Even automated production should be controlled by a technologist. There should always be a person on site.

Setting up advertising, for example, should also be done by a person who knows the peculiarities of the region and people. I still can’t trust customer service to machines, so, for example, I don’t install cheese vending machines. You can automate the bottling of milk, but with cheese everything is more difficult: to check that something is wrong with the cheese, you need to get into the machine. Unless everything inside is frozen.

Oleg Bondarev: Probably, full automation of processes in our country is possible only in the preparation of feed. There you can completely eliminate manual labor and gradually build lines for mixing and storing feed, which are controlled from a single console.

If automation is expensive but effective, are you willing to spend?

Nikita Rossov: If automation is expensive but unaffordable, manufacturing companies will go bankrupt. This is a market, but it cannot exist if no one can buy the products. So I think that a compromise on price is somehow achievable for everyone.

Oleg Bondarev: We are committed to reducing costs as much as possible, so yes.

Pavel Shvets: Every time you need to consider whether the game is worth the candle. Any service can be automated, including so that other winemakers and growers can use it. Accordingly, if the service is needed only by our enterprise, then it is worth calculating whether we can pull it alone. And if you connect two or three enterprises, then this will be a common development – and you can spend more on it.

Are there any problems that factory automation won’t help with?

Nikita Rossov: Lack of tourism infrastructure. Irkutsk is a large transshipment base from where people go to Baikal – Olkhon, Listvyanka and other places. And there, at many camp sites, there are not even refrigerators in the rooms. Tourists usually stop by our farm on their way there and ask what they can buy that does not spoil in the heat. And it’s definitely not cheese. On the way back, few people turn to us, because the road from Olkhon to Irkutsk takes four hours – people are tired and want to relax, and not walk around the farm.

Oleg Bondarev: Cost reduction. For beef cattle breeding, it is important to get an adequate price for the product at the output. It can be achieved by investing in automation, but it is very difficult. More savings are still obtained by expanding the fields for growing fodder crops or extending the grazing season.

Workers. We have vacancies open, we are constantly reviewing candidates. But it is difficult to find adequate people who can integrate into the structure of the enterprise.