Interview of TAdviser with the vice president of Borlas consulting group Alexander Mordukhovich

Alexander Mordukhovich: At present informatization of agriculture is at quite low level. In last years possibilities of investment into the industries were limited therefore owners of the enterprises it was focused only on production organization: land acquisition, technicians, capital construction. Information technologies remained on the second plan. Slightly better the situation was in holdings: they, first, have more resources to manage, secondly, the distributed and often versatile assets without IT systems it is impossible. Worse a situation in small farms. There informatization level initial, i.e. at best simple solutions for financial accounting are used.

Is where to move and in terms of infrastructure - not in all farms in a type of their remoteness from city line there are a stable communication and Internet connection, mobile networks also do not cover the most part of farmlands. In many respects because of bad infrastructure and underutilization of information technologies our producers lag behind in labor productivity the leading world agro-industrial companies.

But now the situation cardinally changes: to the industry big money both came from the budget, and from private investors. Now information technologies are interesting not only as the instrument of support, but as the instrument of business development, optimization of production, performance improvement. The state on behalf of the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications this subject is actively supported. At the same time as "leaders" large agroholdings still act, but I am sure that after them also family households will be tightened. Internet of Things, UAVs, chipping of animals and products, completely robotic productions, - is sets of perspective technologies which, certainly, should find application in the industry. Informatization of agriculture if to paraphrase, it "untilled, but very fertile field".

Alexander Mordukhovich: Now, first of all, the enterprise management systems ground for the specific directions – crop production, livestock production, poultry farming and also systems are interesting to planning and production control. Let's tell, for holdings with large assets they allow to reduce significantly product cost and to increase profit. It is reached thanks to opportunities to manage actions of a field personnel, unification and transparency of these actions, to rapid response of management to change of a situation, the best control and the order to assets, etc.

There is also a need for solutions of permanent monitoring of technology processes, for example, for tracking of technical condition of the equipment and objects of agriculture. With their help it is possible to achieve optimization of operating costs, cutting of costs for maintenance and repair of equipment, the equipment, etc. Geographic information systems are relevant for management of land bank, technology of pilotless and space status monitoring of fields.

It is necessary to tell that for the small agroenterprises and private farms different boxed industry solutions with available implementation cost and supports are necessary, also development of cloud solutions is perspective here.

Alexander Mordukhovich: Landowners perfectly know that expenditure for fuels and lubricants make a considerable part in product cost, and in this area always big losses. Therefore in 2014-2016 the Borlas company developed a monitoring system of automotive and agricultural machinery. The distinctive feature of the solution consists in the high accuracy of measurements of fuel consumption (a deviation no more than 3%), as a rule, unusual for traditional monitoring systems. Besides, it was succeeded to achieve the guaranteed delivery received from sensors, sensors, etc. information devices, including in places with unstable or poor mobile communication. It is provided with specially drafted protocol and advanced software.

Appliances are equipped with the digital sensors of fuel and mobile terminal devices with special completion regarding algorithms of processing and data transmission released in anti-vandal execution. They transfer information on location, speed and the direction of the movement, the spent fuel. Users of a system online observe the route of the movement, a deviation from a route given on an expense and refuellings. The accounting of fuel consumption is carried out only according to indications of sensors, but not on distance in kilometers as it usually becomes that practically excludes a possibility of plunders of the fuels and lubricants (FL).

The Kuban agroholding, one of the largest agrobusinesses of the South of Russia, used our system for monitoring of the park of the equipment which has more than 200 vehicles and several hundred units of agricultural machinery. According to the management of agroholding, in the first months of use of a system it was succeeded to cut down expenses on fuel more than for 32%, to optimize use of the equipment and routes of its movement, to increase discipline of drivers.

At the same time the range of opportunities of our system considerably exceeds standard solutions for monitoring of transport. In fact, it represents implementation of the concept of Internet of Things and at the expense of a broad spectrum of the data obtained from agricultural machinery, their further processing and the analysis allows to control in real time carrying out field works, their compliance to process charts, so, positively affects productivity. Development of a system in the direction of forecasting of necessary repairs of the equipment and also inclusion in a circuit of the project of fuelers and fuel and lubricants storage is now discussed. Thus, a system not only allows to reduce losses, but also increases profitability of the enterprise.

Alexander Mordukhovich: Really, we together with Kuban agroholding create a management system for crop production on the basis of the international solution Oracle JD Edwards Enterprise One for agriculture. In addition to the accounting functions implemented in the industry software products presented at the market, our development solves problems of decision support at all levels and significantly reduces influence of a human factor due to end-to-end automation of production processes.

Now process of cultivation of grain crops in many respects reminds "a black box". What occurs in the field in each timepoint why the date of these or those transactions is postponed as taking into account natural factors at a stage of "ear" to estimate cost value of future harvest and most precisely its volume – answers to these and many other questions, extremely important for business, predicts, our system calculates or fixes.

Besides, it creates the optimal operating plan of accomplishment of agricultural works on all fields of economy as own and hired park of the equipment, optimal placement of cultures on acreage according to the business plan. Control of the carried-out agronomical works and formation of product cost with detailing to a separate field is provided.

The created system will function in a complex with the information infrastructure of agroholding including monitoring of agricultural machinery, a meteorological station, an electronic document management system and the system of accounting, accumulating in itself necessary data up to the APCS level. In practice of agricultural enterprises of Russia such system is created for the first time.

In our arsenal there are also products for the solution of more uzkofunktsionalny, but not less relevant tasks. For production, for example on poultry farms, we have tools for solving of tasks of operational optimization of assortment planning. The solution is based on modern technologies of mathematical modeling. In the daily mode, considering the available production yield in live weight and a pool of orders, a system counts the most marginal option of processing and shipment of products.

In general Borlas pays much attention to development of industry expertize and a product portfolio for the agro-industrial companies. We consider HSC strategically important industry.

Alexander Mordukhovich: Internet of Things is very interesting concept and technology. Not casually the prospects of its use in agriculture are discussed at the level of the Government, the appropriate program of actions is developed. Application of IoT will allow to collect in real time data from the sensors installed in the soil, special equipment and the equipment. For example, in crop production it is possible to obtain information on weather, humidity, a status of the soil and plants in dynamics. For agronomists it is invaluable data for increase in productivity. I think that in the long term two-three years, most likely, it will be pilot projects at the advanced enterprises and also implementation of separate solutions like monitoring of the equipment which already proved the efficiency. Mass implementation of technologies of Internet of Things, chipping of animals – perspective more distant as the enterprises need to tighten at first information and communication infrastructure, in many cases to resolve more vital issues connected with informatization and also to reach a certain maturity of internal business processes. But I am sure that right now agriculture has a unique chance for several years to pass a way of informatization on which at other industries 10-15 years left, and from catching up to turn into the leader.