FAO supports innovative development of agriculture in Russia

The Institute for Agrarian Studies at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics (HSE), an FAO partner, jointly with the National Association for Technology Transfer and the Skolkovo Foundation, launched a report on “Innovative development of the agro-industrial complex in Russia. Agriculture 4.0”. The online presentation was part of the programme of HSE’s XXI April International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development.

The report’s authors noted that modern world food systems are entering a fundamentally new stage of technological development, defined as “Agriculture 4.0” and distinguished by the introduction of “smart” solutions (robotics, precision agriculture, IoT ("Internet of things"), biotechnologies, alternative technologies and sources of raw materials.

In the course of the discussion, Aghasi Harutyunyan, senior officer of the FAO Liaison Office with the Russian Federation, made a presentation on “Innovation as a driving force for achieving a world without hunger”.

Investment and support for innovation in the agri-food sector is fully consistent with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. FAO as a specialized UN agency that primarily aims to encourage the efforts by the state, the society, and business, scientific and expert communities at the global eradication of hunger, considers it necessary to “enhance cooperation and knowledge sharing to improve access to technology and innovation”, facilitate “development, transfer and sharing of environmentally friendly technologies”, and create “mechanisms to build-up competence and train personnel in the least developed countries”, Harutyunyan said.

The speaker provided several examples of FAO's activities in this area. An Innovation Office will be established at the FAO headquarters in Rome. A dedicated innovation portal is available on the Organization’s website http://www.fao.org/innovation/ru/. Further, FAO has created an online platform that gathers successful agricultural technologies and practices to facilitate knowledge exchange and help family farmers in the field (TECA) http://www.fao.org/teca/en/, and  e-Agriculture http://www.fao.org/e-agriculture/home, a global community of practice where people from all over the world come to exchange information, ideas and resources related to the use of ICTs for agriculture. SMART AGRO 4.0, a project promoting sustainable agricultural practices through digitization and innovative technologies is implemented in Latin American countries. http://www.fao.org/partnerships/private-sector/stories/story/ar/c/1236975/.

Also, a database on food losses and waste has been created. An international award for innovation in sustainable food production and agriculture has been established. Publications on the use of innovations in agriculture have been aggregated at a central information repository: http://www.fao.org/publications/highlights-detail/ru/c/1171620/.

In the field of innovations in agriculture, FAO acts as an aggregator of breakthrough research, methodological approaches, and practical recommendations based on best practices, Harutyunyan enphasized.

The researchers who authored the report note that Russian businesses, although “interested in moving to a new technological stage and clearly understanding the need for investment in the creation of new technologies, remain mainly focused on the catch-up model of introducing innovation s. This choice is forced by “the instability of business environment, hard-to-predict market conditions, and, accordingly, short-term planning horizons.”

Experts cited “the systemic problem of inefficiency of the communication among key stakeholders (the private sector, academia and federal executive agencies)” among barriers to the innovative transformation of the agro-industry.

This inefficiency is reflected in “an imperfect normative and legal framework with an emphasis on the bureaucratic nature of the problem, and in “the absence of dialogue among the private sector and the academia, the reasons for which are a set of objective factors: low level of equipment of research institutes, shortage of (qualified) personnel and competencies.” 

There are also subjective factors: differing visions of goals and results as business often cannot formulate a task that is understandable to researchers, while researchers tend to present their innovations using language that is incomprehensible to business. Moreover, inefficiency of the technology transfer support system should not be neglected.

The event took place on the Zoom platform and was broadcast live via YouTube.