News & Events in Belarus
Lukashenko urges digitalization in agriculture
An archive photo
People who have never worked the land have no idea what digital farming is. If translated into a "non-rural" language, it is like the introduction of e-queues and e-prescriptions in clinics. It seems things were ok before the time of e-queues and e-prescriptions. People used to queue to see a doctor, buy medicines. But digitalization in medicine saves massive amounts of time! The same is true for agriculture. Only in agriculture this may bring completely different results. Before anything farms need to buy equipment, sensors, drones and tablets and teach people how to use them. This is the number one task for Belarusian agricultural executives. In this episode of BelTA’s YouTube project “After the Fact: Lukashenko’s Decision” we will tell you how much smart harvesters and tractors cost. Why does a cow need a fitness tracker? Why do all farmers want to buy drones?
How do Belarusian farmers bring old farm machines to life
At the end of July, Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko visited the Voskhod farm in Minsk District and praised the rapeseed harvest. Something that, among other things, will serve as animal food all winter. Here you can see digitalization in practice.
The farm does not have to record the history of a field on paper. Its agronomist has software and tablets to see what the past harvests were, what fertilizers were used. Everything is connected to the GPS and GLONASS satellite systems to increase the accuracy of movement of farm machines on a field. An error is two centimeters. Tractors and harvesters have on-board computers. In what concerns tractors in general, any farm should have them in a working mode.
During a working trip to Gomel Oblast in April of last year, the head of state got acquainted with the system for repair and restoration of old equipment and drew attention to discipline issues.
Farms use tractors and trailed equipment for 5, 7 or 10 years, then decommission them or leave them under the fence! 10 years in operation and it is decommissioned! Voila! Bring old equipment back to life! Assemble one machine from two, if possible. If you haven't dismantled them for parts yet. Use old equipment as a source for spare parts and give new life to a new machine. It is a beauty!” the president said while inspecting the restored machines.
The head of state said that this instruction should not have come from him. Farms should take a good care of the equipment themselves. "We do not take care of equipment. This is money!" he said.
A Gomselmash harvester should work for at least 15 years, the president insisted. Aleksandr Lukashenko recalled how he once talked with an American farmer who had been operating a Belarusian tractor for more than 30 years and it was in good working order.
The Gomselmash harvester GS10 PRO is considered the golden ration in terms of price/quality. It costs more than Br500,000. Or about $170,000. Based on this figure, we can imagine how much mismanagement costs. MTZ tractor costs about $210,000. The amount of equipment abandoned in mechanical yards equals losses. Easy to calculate.
This harvester can be equipped with a yield mapping system. It tracks the yield per every square meter and the amount of nutrients the crop has absorbed from the soil such as potassium, phosphorus and nitrogen. And thus you can increase yields by an average of 25%. So these are the two examples how the equipment can be used.
Digitalization systems Resource Control, M-Complex and Field History
the Voskhod farm uses three information systems that make our farm more efficient. The first system is the Resource Control. It is meant for transport monitoring. The second system is the M-complex for animal husbandry. The third system is the Field History for the agronomic service. The farm began to actively implement all these systems in 2023. The first system was the Resource Control for transport monitoring. It monitors the fuel consumption of the fleet. This is very efficient. Let's say, it is no longer possible to steal fuel in the way it could be done many years ago.
The second system, which has taken root at the farm and is actively used, is the M-complex system of animal husbandry. This the farm sees milk yield, weight gain on all its three cattle farms in real time. This allows its specialists to respond more actively to some daily problems. The feeding module tracks feeding, its accuracy.
Field History is an analogue of the field book, which is maintained by agronomists and the agronomic service. This system accumulates information on every field. This allows the farm to make better decisions in the future about which crops to grow in these fields next season. In addition, the program digitizes each field, and tractors equipped with autopilots can move through these fields along the trajectory specified in the "Field History".
How much time do Belarusian scientists need to breed a new breed of cattle
In animal husbandry, it is even more interesting. Over the past two years, almost all of us have tried trackers or smart watches to measure our pulse, blood pressure, and to track our activity. Many farms also make use of them in ... cow husbandry. The world of technology is developing fast. Not to make use of it means to go belly up in the near future.
This is a transition from reactive control when things are already out of control (the herd got sick, or the milk yield has fallen) to active control. Farmers see the looming problems in advance and act immediately. These are the most common examples. There is also animal genotyping, a technology that allows you to improve the structure of the herd much faster than traditional breeding methods.
One of the driving forces of the livestock industry in Belarus is the Scientific and Practical Center for Animal Husbandry of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. Among other things, it is engaged in the breeding of new and improvement of existing breeds of livestock. According to Aleksandr Portnoi, Director General of the Scientific and Practical Center for Animal Husbandry of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, these processes have recently accelerated significantly.
“In the last century our black and mottled breed of pigs took more than 30 years to breed. We spent some 15 to 16 years to breed a new Belarusian meat and white breed. Thus, the time of breed observation has reduced by almost two times. New DNA-technologies, gene-marker technologies made it possible to learn about the productivity of the offspring much faster. This has already been bringing positive results,” Aleksandr Portnoi said.
What are the uses of drones in agriculture?
Drones are the most advanced device used in agriculture today. Spraying quadrocopters have pesticide tanks and liquid level sensors. They spray up to 14 hectares per hour. A human will never be able to do so. Drones do their job quickly and efficiently. They can also seed up to 50kg per minute. Drones can fly through orchards and pollinate the lower part of plants.
Digitalization may is a matter of strategy for farm managers.
“It was the right decision by the head of state to focus on the need to implement digital technologies in agriculture. Today it is impossible to develop without digital technology. They are everywhere, in every area we we. Agriculture was a little behind in this respect. Today we are doing our best to catch up. The decision on digitalization was the most correct one,” said Olga Lipskaya, Head of the Legal and HR Department at the Voskhod farm.
Those who come to work long term can design the equipment themselves. With some help. But everything really starts from the inner desire to work well.
An example of such a prudent approach is the agricultural branch of Minskoblagroservice which Aleksandr Lukashenko visited in August 2022 during a working trip to Myadel District of Minsk Oblast. The president explained why this particular farm is remarkable. It is an example of a new farm. Taking into account modern approaches, it has the necessary facilities, including a good mechanical yard for storage and maintenance of equipment, a grain drying complex. The farm in the Myadel District was created virtually from scratch by merging two inefficient farm and their farmland.
"This is an example of a new farm: a machine yard, a grain drying facility and a dairy farm. This farm, in Myadel District (which is in the northern part of the country) should probably be focused on dairy cattle breeding and cattle fattening. If you decide to produce poultry and pork, that will be good," the Belarusian leader said.
What technologies do Belarusian dairy farms use?
How digital technologies are used on dairy farms can be seen at the Samokhvalochi enterprise near Minsk. Maria Tishina, the head of the Samokhvalovichi dairy farm, admits that new technologies were initially met with caution. But after a short time, the farm made sure that they make life easier. M-complex has significantly reduced the amount of paperwork. With the click of just one button, a full-fledged report is generated at the end of the month.
The tablets are a great tool for a machine operator who is engaged in fodder loading/unloading. They get the feeding plan online. The operator chooses the date on the tablet, clicks “morning” for example and gets his ready-to-use plan which provides the necessary amount of straw, haylage, silage, conditioned grain. After that, the data are sent to M-complex where the head of the complex can see the percentage of feeding per day. This allows you to control the feeding, its balance. if, for example, the milk yield falls, I can determine there the fault was," Maria Tishina said.
Food products are somethings that Belarusians make really well. Here we have no equals. The whole world buys our food products. To be exact, more than 100 countries purchase Belarusian food products for almost $7.5 billion a year. Belarus is among the top five exporters of dairy products and top 20 exporters of meat products. Given this, every farmer should be interested in using sensors, circuits, software, yield management devices, be it grain, cucumbers, or fodder. Regardless of the form of ownership - state-run or private. This should be taken as a rule: if you decide to do something, do it well.
print version
make home page
add to bookmarks
