If you take a look at domestic Russian agricultural research, Russia will seem an all-world champion in everything agriculture: the export of wheat and pork grows day by day, the food stores groan from Russian tomatoes and cheeses thanks to the import substitution, etc. However, if we look a little wider, we will see that agribusinesses in Russia are ineffective. According to J'son & Partners Consulting, the gross value of agricultural products per employee in our country in 2015 was $ 8,000, in Germany $ 24,000, in the US $ 195,000.
The developed world enters the era of Agriculture 4.0. Harvest now depends not so much on the diligence of the farmer, but rather on the use of smart technologies: the Internet of things (today every 6th project in the IoT field is implemented in agriculture), analysis of large data, predictive analytics. Agro-market quickly merges with the IT industry which guarantees explosive growth in productivity at lower costs. This explains the high investment attractiveness of the industry.
Seven years ago, venture investments in agro-startups did not exceed $ 400,000; in 2015 the market set a record - $ 4.6 billion. Annually 500 new projects emerge, and most start-ups "grow" in the fields of the USA, China, India, Canada, and Israel.
Russia still has to strive hard to get to this top. Why? I completely agree with the answer given by J'son & Partners analysts: one of the reasons for Russia's technological backwardness is that cheap and low-quality food products prevail in the structure of consumption in our country. The authors of the study, referring to Rosstat and more respectable sources, say that consumption of meat, dairy products, fruits and vegetables is lower than medical standards, and 2-3 times lower than in the US and Germany.
A vicious circle: a farmer is barely making ends meet without having the resources to innovate while quality products are unavailable for a buyer.
In a long chain of intermediaries, the price of the crop grows exponentially, but it does not yield much to those working the land directly: 90% of the sales from agricultural products remain in wholesale and retail trade, and with banks. Digitalization can change this.
Reduce the supply chain and make all production and logistics processes as open as possible is the main task of our agricultural project, EcoGreenHouse (
www.egh.io). The mechanism for this has already been thought up - blockchain. When buying our eco-tokens, you confirm membership in the EGH club and get the opportunity to purchase fresh vegetables grown by organic technology in living soil, at a cost of 25%, which is 5-10 times cheaper than in stores.
#EcoGreenHouse, #egh, #ICO