Accelerating the pace of technological development leads to an increase in the volume and intensity of information exchange, including between subjects of economic activity. The urgency of the issue of intensification of digitalization processes in all spheres of production is due by this reason. The commodity plant production is not left out, the importance of which for the economy of Ukraine is increased by the accumulation of structural changes due to the war.
For activities which are based on the use of naturally anthropogenic ecosystems as a means of production, one of the basic components of the introduction of digitalization is monitoring as an information source for optimizing the ecological and economic management of production processes. The availability of a wide data range determines the formation of a digital space continuum as a condition for production efficiency, strengthening economic capacity, optimizing the resource potential using in all its forms and types. This requires a systematic approach to the organization of production with a focus on minimizing the anthropogenic load, including the achievement of climate neutrality, which is aimed at by international efforts within the framework of the tasks of the green transition.
The latest green economy tools form a regulatory and legislative field to ensure the capitalization of agricultural resource potential by forming the inverse dependence of profitability on the degree of anthropogenic load. This task gives the functioning of the information and registration infrastructure the status of an organizational and economic tool. To achieve these goals, a set of economic levers is proposed, the effectiveness of which also requires control, which is impossible without a clear and transparent functioning of the information and registration infrastructure. Therefore, there is a growing need for monitoring information to form a database not only of indicators of quality characteristics of soil cover as an indicator of compliance with agrotechnological frameworks, but also of spatial parameters of land use.
The monitoring optimizing of agroecosystems as an information base for the digitization for agriproduction processes is in line with international requirements for the use of agricultural land, that are legally enshrined in EU countries and are based on the Decisions of the Parties Conferences of the to the UNFCCC. The commodity crop production sector has one of the highest potentials for the introduction of digitalization while ensuring the automation and robotization of technological processes, which opens the way to recovery and preservation, optimization of the use of agricultural resource potential with increasing the resistance of agrolandscapes to anthropogenic loadings. This is confirmed by the powerful potential of carbon absorption by the soils of agricultural lands at the level of 14-14.5 million tons of CO2-e through the implementation of a scientifically based system of land protection measures.
Digitization involves the integration of the basic components of digital technologies and the computerization of workplaces, the pace of economic development ultimately depends on the effectiveness of their functioning. Nowadays this term must be considered according to a more comprehensive level that changes the characteristics of socio-economic aspects and ecological-economic components of production processes. Digitization determines the way of organizing production which aimed at achieving the ecological and economic optimum with the basic component of climate neutrality in the use of natural resource potential while maintaining acceptable profitability levels through automation and robotization of production processes and systems. Thanks to the implementation of the outlined approach a path is opened to reducing of the natural resources consumption and emissions of harmful substances, decreasing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing carbon absorption by natural-anthropogenic ecosystems.
The minimization of anthropogenic load ensuring in the most optimal way requires a detailed analysis of the ecological footprint of products during the entire life cycle, a special case of which is the carbon footprint. The life cycle of crop production can be considered as a sequential chain combination of three blocks – agrobiological, agrotechnological and agroeconomic, which is quite conditional and is explained by the technological stages of crop production:
It should be noted that the databases formation based on the specified blocks was started in one form or another long before the idea of digitization appeared. At this development stage the task of systematizing and constantly expanding these databases, creating opportunities to facilitate their use, arises. The availability of these databases facilitates not only the selection of the best crop production practices, but also opens the way to the optimal selection of agricultural technologies based on agro-ecological conditions and technological capabilities. Increasing the automation and robotization of agro-technological production significantly facilitates the process of monitoring agro-production activity of crop production by ensuring the possibility of collecting information in real time and creating prerequisites for optimizing the processes of preparing reports on the inventory of emissions and absorption of greenhouse gases in the land use sector. In addition, the digitization of crop production contributes to increasing the accuracy of forecast calculations both in terms of estimating future harvests and future sales of not only crop production, but also the volume of GHG emissions which creates the possibility of early response to their potential reduction and/or avoidance. Similarly, there are an opportunities to reduce the levels of production risks of possible technological violations which in turn are related to insurance payments and industrial safety at the enterprise.
The need to expand the fleet of registration equipment at agricultural enterprises across the country ensures the creation of jobs for their production. Increasing the automation and robotization levels of production processes requires increasing the qualification levels of service personnel, which contributes to strengthening the social stability and regions economic capacity. The final effect of the introduction of crop production digitalization is not only the promotion of achieving the climate neutrality goal, but also enables the fulfillment of a higher-level task – the transition to an ecologically oriented economy based on the development of a system of new organizational and economic tools for management decision making.
Research agronomist, GHG assessment analyst of I.P.Cert
Doctor of Economics
Oksana Butrym
