RUSSIA AND AGRICULTURE 4.0

DOI 10.32651/2070-0288-2018-6-98-103

Issue № 6, 2018, article № 15, pages 98-103

Section: Foreign news

Language: Russian

Original language title: РОССИЯ И СЕЛЬСКОЕ ХОЗЯЙСТВО 4.0

Keywords: DATA ENVELOPMENT ANALYSIS, AGRICULTURE 4.0, AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION, TECHNOLOGY GAP, TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY, MET FRONTIER APPROACH, RUSSIA, CIS COUNTRIES, ADVANCED ECONOMIES

Abstract: This study examines the need for Russia to switch to technologies of Agriculture 4.0 (Digital agriculture) - the current stage of agricultural development according to the European association of the agricultural machinery industry CEMA. The objectives of this article are: to calculate a technology gap between Russia and advanced economies in the agricultural production; assess technical efficiency of Russia’s agriculture within the CIS countries; analyze the need to switch to technologies of Agriculture 4.0 for Russia. Data envelopment analysis is used as a methodology for the calculations: a metafrontier approach is applied to the non oriented SBM model with constant returns to scale (with two groups of countries: the CIS and the advanced economies; the time interval of data: 2000-2014). The study shows that the technology gap between Russia and the advanced economies is relatively large, and it decreases quite slowly; at the same time, the technical efficiency of Russia's agriculture within the CIS countries is close to unity. This suggests that Russia has exhausted the potential of its technologies in agricultural production, and it needs to apply new ones (Agriculture 4.0), which are estimated to increase the potential output of agricultural production by about 1.8 times at the same cost of agricultural resources. As a source of financing for the introduction of new technologies, it is proposed to change the structure of state support of agriculture (by reducing market price support in favour of increasing support to fixed capital formation).

Authors: Korotchenia Valerii Mikhailovich