Research of Russian regional farmers’ digital activity

Abstract

Relevance. Special attention is paid to the digitalization of agriculture: if you do not join this process in a timely manner and do not occupy your niche, then soon you can lose the profitability of the company. Taking into account current trends, the paper explores the potential for the transition of agribusiness in six subjects of the Volga Federal District of the Russian Federation to a digital economy, and also considers the prerequisites that contribute to the development of digitalization in the countryside.Methods. The structure of the study can be conditionally divided into three stages. The first stage is to determine the digitalization potential of regional farmers by preparing and conducting a survey and analyzing the information received, using monographic, economic-statistical and computational-constructive methods, as well as peer review and scientific abstraction; the second stage is an assessment of the overall level of socio-economic development ofrural areas of these entities. At the third stage, the relationship between the potential of digitalization and the level of development of rural territories of the subjects of the Volga Federal District was revealed.Results. According to the results of the survey, 66% of 100% of the surveyed companies in the Republic of Mordovia and the Ulyanovsk region have a high potential for the transition to the use and its analytics — these are the maximum results in monitoring. In the context of farm categories, a high desire for digitalization is demonstrated by resellers involved in the wholesale purchase and subsequent sale of agricultural products (57%), agricultural cooperatives (54%). Slightly above average data have agricultural and processing enterprises: 47.5% and 46.5% respectively. Based on the results of the work carried out, one can highlight the decrease in the number of companies not interested in digitalization: from 24.0% for the period 2020–2021 to 13.8% in 2021–2022. The results obtained by the authors are important for assessing the level of digitalization of agribusiness in the Russian Federation.