Small forms of management are the basis for the development of agriculture and rural areas. The results of the Agricultural Micro-Census of 2021 showed a significant reduction in the number of small enterprises and farms. The decrease in the number of producers is noted precisely among small farms. At the same time, there is a tendency to increase the area per small enterprise and farm, which indicates the processes of concentration in agriculture. But small forms of management have low marketability indicators compared to large commodity producers, low availability of facilities for storing agricultural products. They are only formally equal market participants. In order to strengthen market positions, small business entities should use the reserves of cooperation as the main tool that ensures the increase in the efficiency of their economic activities. The institutional conditions created for agricultural cooperation (the law on agricultural cooperation, state support) did not ensure the mass participation of small business entities in agricultural cooperatives. In our opinion, the increase in involvement in agricultural consumer cooperatives is associated with the adjustment of the conditions of state support for agricultural consumer cooperatives, ensuring the priority of cooperation in state agrarian policy, strengthening the role of competence centers in the field of agricultural cooperation and support for farmers and municipalities in cultivating and transforming households into high-quality farms, training in the technology of creating cooperatives and popularization of cooperation in agriculture.
Municipalities are the most important link in the economic security system, they ensure the comfort of the life of the population, provide the level of social services, create favorable conditions for the life of the population. Each subject of the Russian Federation has distinctive features: geopolitical, natural-climatic, natural-raw materials, environmental, ethno cultural and others, which allows us to conclude that a single strategy model is unacceptable for all regions of the country. The purpose of the research is to assess the risks and threats of rural municipalities of the Republic of Kalmykia, group by hazard level and develop a municipal strategic planning system. The work methodology is based on the application of a set of different approaches to the development of a municipal strategic planning system and the justification of criteria for identifying threats and challenges to the economic security of rural municipalities, which will serve as the basis for municipal strategizing. Informative indicators are proposed that determine the level of threats to the economic security of municipalities, their theoretical justification is presented and the experience of their practical implementation is considered.
Maximum efficiency in agriculture can be achieved only by having up-to-date and accurate information about the area, topography, and specifics of the soil of the fields. The simplest and most effective way to obtain such information is to use drones. Drones in Russian agriculture are one of the most promising areas for which demand is actively growing. UAVs combine information and communication technologies, robots, artificial intelligence, big data and the Internet of Things. Agricultural drones have great capabilities and their use has expanded in all areas of agriculture, including spraying pesticides and fertilizers, sowing seeds, as well as growth assessment and mapping. Farmers use two types of UAVs, differing in their design and flight characteristics – aircraft type and copter. Today, drones are available not only to large agricultural holdings and complexes, but also to medium-sized and even small farms. For more active development of drones in the Russian market, regulatory barriers were lowered and special programs for training professional operators of small UAVs appeared. The market for agricultural UAVs is expected to continue to grow with appropriate technologies. The article examines the latest trends and areas of application of advanced technologies related to agricultural UAVs, control technologies, equipment and developments. The options for using UAVs in real agricultural conditions are given. The use of drones helps not only to conduct a detailed analysis of the conditions affecting the quality of vegetation, but also to optimize production.
The application of the new innovative practice of «Living Laboratories» within the framework of the concept of «Open Innovation» is analyzed on the example of agriculture in Canada. In modern scientific literature, the definition of «living laboratories» is defined by the field of interdisciplinary research, which is a practical example of the functioning of the model of a four-link spiral of innovation. It is clarified that living laboratories are projects or objects of scientific and industrial infrastructure based on the systematic involvement of: Business communities, State participation bodies, Science and Education Organizations and civil society like Citizens Users who actively engage in the innovation process in the conditions of modern realities. It is noted that living laboratories are guided in their work by the principles of open innovation, the active involvement of their own corporate scientific research, innovations and competencies from the outside, for the study, creation, use, testing and evaluation of innovations in real conditions. This approach is relatively new in the context of promoting sustainable agriculture but has already proven itself well in many other areas, such as information and communication technologies. The key role in the innovation process within the framework of open innovations is assigned to their users, in this case farmers. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the experience of using «live laboratories» in the agricultural sector of Canada in the context of promoting sustainable agriculture and new opportunities for farmers as key participants in innovation activities in «live laboratories» projects. In the work, this type of agricultural industry laboratories is proposed to be called «agroecological living laboratories». Based on the review of modern literature on innovations, the key principles of the work of agroecological living laboratories, their indicators and characteristics are determined. An overview of existing case projects is also presented, and the expected results of climate change are shown. The presented review will be of interest to researchers and practitioners dealing with interdisciplinary issues and innovation activities.
Currently, state authorities and the scientific community have focused on the export of products of the Russian agro-industrial complex. The interest of the State is reflected in the approval of a number of projects to support the development of export activities with significant budgetary funding. The interest of the scientific community is expressed in the increase in the number of scientific publications on this topic, indexed in the RSCI. If on this topic in 2011-2015. there were 10-20 scientific articles on the export of the agro-industrial complex annually, then in 2017-2021 more than 60. The growth of interest is due to reasons lying in the economic plane. In the Russian agro-industrial complex in the mid-2010s, prerequisites were created for the growth of production of crop products, primarily grain crops. From 2014 to 2021, grain production reached and annually exceeded the target of 100 million tons. At the same time, domestic consumption during this period increased slightly. The Russian Federation has taken a stable position as the world leader in grain exports. The position of state authorities on the further development of the export activities of the Russian agro-industrial complex is unambiguous. This is a steady growth in export volumes, reflected in the targets of the federal project "Export of agricultural products." In recent years, the goal of increasing exports has been systematically achieved. However, researchers are focusing on two of a kind of sub-water rocks of increasing exports. The first is an exceptional focus on raw materials exports, and monoproduct. The second is ignoring the possibility of directing part of the excess volumes of grain produced to the formation of the feed base of Russian animal husbandry. The potential of the Russian agro-industrial complex is very high, there are reasons to argue that its long-term development must be diversified, in three directions at once - it is necessary to continue to increase production volumes, maintain a leading position in grain export, develop the processing sector for the export of products with higher added value, and increase the feed base for the growth of livestock.
The issues of increasing the validity of the conceptual provisions of strategic planning for the development of the agri-food sector, aimed at creating the physical and economic accessibility of products, are raised. It has been determined that the current legal framework creates difficulties in implementing such a strategy concept, which ensures mutual coherence and unity of provisions on the sustainable development of the agricultural sector and ensuring food security as a complex problem solved at the sectoral and regional level. It is shown that the basis of the conceptual provisions of strategizing is the task of self-sufficiency of rational consumption standards and balancing of domestic demand and supply of domestic products at a fundamentally new level. To effectively integrate conceptual provisions into the strategic planning system, it has been established that it is methodologically correct to study the categories “physical accessibility” and “economic accessibility” in inextricable connection. It is proposed to supplement the content of strategic planning for the development of the agri-food sector with scientific provisions based on the convergence of the physical and economic accessibility of products. This will strengthen the conceptual line of the new Food Security Doctrine by setting a multi-purpose task to interlink production and consumption with rational standards and developing methods for its comprehensive solution. The effects of specifying conceptual provisions will extend to the methodological and practical foundations of strategizing. It is expected that the strategic planning system will be harmonized at the federal and regional levels, focused on the effective use of the competitive advantages of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation in achieving new milestones in food security. Options for the legal promulgation and practical implementation of the proposed conceptual provisions for strategizing the agri-food sector are proposed.
The article considers the social and legal aspects of regulating seasonal employment in agriculture in the context of the implementation of social agrarian policy aimed at reducing unemployment in the rural area and increasing the social protection of seasonal agricultural workers. Attention is focused on the fact that a large mass of seasonal workers in agriculture, working under an employment contract, turned out to be outside the state-regulated issue of calculating the insurance length of service that has existed in industries since 2002 for similar employees. In this regard, a hypothesis is put forward about the gaps in the legislative support of such a form of activity as seasonal employment in agriculture, the principles of fixing the working conditions of seasonal workers in agriculture at the regulatory level are proposed. The author's concept of the category "Seasonal agricultural worker" is also formulated and the legal support of its status is proposed.
The paper delves into pertinent issues related to the integration and application of digital intelligent solutions in the operational aspects of agricultural production, with a particular focus on their utilization in diagnosing diseases within grain crop plantings. The article's core objective centers on the analysis of challenges associated with orchestrating intelligent diagnostics within the grain complex's activities. To uncover these intricacies, a project management system has been introduced to outline the progressive sequence from preparing IT solutions to their effective implementation in the production cycle. This systematic approach facilitates the identification of primary barriers within the business process of agricultural crop diagnostics, grouping them into functional blocks: data management, infrastructure development, framework and platform utilization, human resources, and regulatory requisites. Given the predominance of conventional diagnostic practices, the article presents a conceptual operational foundation for neural network-based diagnosis of grain crop plantings. This foundation is structured across three hierarchical tiers: individual, regional, and federal. Each level tackles specific tasks within its purview, aimed at enriching databases, thereby adapting analytical systems and decision-making processes to ensure maximum relevance and precision. The proposed framework could serve as a foundational model for developing a comprehensive methodology for well-founded managerial decisions in grain production within the evolving context of digital agriculture. The conceptual strategies for forming an organizational strategy for intelligent diagnostics, as presented in the article, have been meticulously developed, taking into account established decisions driving the development of the digital economy within the agricultural sector.
Nowadays the development of agricultural innovations is due to digital technologies. At the initial digitalization stages, agricultural machinery and aggregates are equipped with various sensors that transmit the parameters of technological processes directly to the machine operator. At the next stage, personal computers, tablets and smartphones are equipped with special applications that allow remote control of production processes. And at the latest stages, it combines the main technological processes of the crop industry into a single chain, which allows you to move from drawing up technological maps for each crop to each field, take into account and plan agricultural landscapes, microclimatic parameters, seed consumption, etc. All subsequent stages of digitalization of crop farms and their transition to a new technological order require the involvement of new resources. This can be done only through the joint efforts of representatives of agribusiness, public authorities, scientific and academic organizations, as well as financial institutions. Consequently, agricultural enterprises have three stages of digital maturity: initial, intermediate and final. A number of measures were proposed for each stage of the development of digital technologies by grain producers. So at the initial stage, it is enough to build bilateral business relations between agricultural producers and IT firms. This allows us to solve particular production tasks. At the second and third stages, it is planned to complicate and consolidate economic ties between participants in the digital transformation process. At the final stage, it is necessary to create specialized venture funds. They will enable more developed agricultural areas to transfer the positive experience of using digital technologies to less developed ones. Taking this into account, the conditions for the formation of a digital ecosystem of agricultural enterprises of the Saratov region based on the concept of Agriculture 4.0 were presented. This ecosystem is designed to create favorable conditions for the external environment of agricultural enterprises for the transfer of innovations, as well as to accelerate the transition to a new (the sixth) technological order.
Intellectual capital as a complex system of components, along with physical and financial assets, makes it possible to achieve sustainable competitive advantages and ensure growth in business value. The study analyzes the influence of internal factors related to the activities of agricultural companies on their market value. The object of the study is Russian agricultural companies whose shares are traded on the Moscow Exchange. The subject of the study is financial and economic relations that arise in the process of formation and implementation of value-based management of companies. The purpose of the study is to identify internal factors that influence the value of agricultural companies. An analysis of the development trends of the Russian agro-industrial complex, including innovative activity, was carried out. A trend toward a reduction in innovation activity has been identified in a number of industries. It is shown that the renewal of fixed assets of agricultural companies does not allow them to level out the high level of their wear and tear, which impedes the transformation of intellectual resources into capital. It is substantiated that intensive modernization and sustainable growth of agricultural companies requires the harmonious development of material and intangible components, which will allow obtaining a synergistic effect. The influence of return on equity, as well as intellectual capital, assessed using Tobin's coefficient, on the value of agricultural companies is substantiated through the use of multifactor correlation and regression analysis. The resulting regression model allowed us to conclude that the growth of intellectual capital (Tobin's coefficient) will lead to a significantly greater increase in the value of the company than an increase in return on equity. Recommendations are provided for Russian agribusiness companies that will contribute to the implementation of value-based business management.