• • • How digital farming could boost Russia’s competitive advantage on global markets
When the Kursk region-based agricultural enterprise Agrofirma Rylskaya noticed that the costs of their sugar beet production were constantly rising, with no corresponding increase in yield, they turned to an innovative tech startup. Roboprob, a resident startup of the Skolkovo Foundation’s biomed cluster, used its robotised system to collect soil samples across the sugar beet plantation in question. Those samples were then analysed to determine what farming methods are best suited to that particular land, such as what kind of fertilizer to apply and when.
The partnership between Agrofirma Rylskaya and Roboprob was just one of six success stories presented at the Precision Farming conference held at the Skolkovo Technopark. Precision farming is often primarily associated with data obtained from unmanned aerial vehicles and satellites, but sometimes the farmer needs data on the quality and quantity of the soil and the nutrients in it, and that requires physical samples. It was for such cases that Roboprob designed its automated system, which saves on human labour costs.
