Quiet Green Revolution: Drones and Robots Over Fields Of Russia
© Виталий Тимкив
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There is one truly miraculous industry in Russia that has raised its productivity by 55% in ten years, and that’s agriculture. Let us, first, see how it became possible, and then imagine what it means for all the world for decades to come.
The figure is official, it has been quoted by Ms. Oksana Lute, Russia’s Minister for Agriculture. She is promising to add 25 more per cent in the next five years and raise Russia’s food exports by 1.5 times.
Subsidies for farmers were very much present, of course, but let’s see exactly what has been subsidized. First of all, that’s new technologies, showing that the new age is already here.
Indian Green Revolution was first and foremost about biotechnologies, as we remember. Russia’s Green Revolution is about new plant varieties, too, but then there are drones and artificial intellect that rule the fields and farms these days. These new miracles has given birth to a new expression, that is precision agriculture.
How does it look from the outside: you may not even notice the difference. Fields are fields and farms are farms. But you may notice drones, hovering regularly over the same fields and farms. These drones carry something called multispectral cameras, they also are monitoring signals from tiny things, dug into earth, that are showing exactly how wet and how healthy is that earth. Information from these gadgets is needed to decide about how much fertilizers and water the field currently needs.
Next step, say the researchers and engineers, is teaching the drones to land in areas in question, take samples of earth and bring it to people sitting comfortably in monitoring centers. The step after next is teaching these drones to do the analysis themselves, while still in the air
And that, among many other things, lets you drastically reduce volumes of fertilizers applied. You do it only in several spots that need it, the ones discovered by drones and the rest. And do not forget the well-known problem of industrial and other waste, seeping into the earth. Now you can detect and analyze it immediately. Finally, each and every tractor and other kind of machine in the fields has to, since January this year, carry a GLONASS space positioning system.
Mr. Dmitry Patrushev, Deputy Prime Minister, says that these technologies allow to cut costs by 20 per cent on plant protection, but also reduce costs on machinery, purchased and used, by staggering 400-500 per cent.
As you may guess, the same methods may be, and indeed are, being applied to animal farms. Health of cows and other creatures on two and four legs is now getting under control, too. Exactly how these technologies are raising productivity: just one example from a chicken farm in the Russian Far East. Six months of introducing new technologies there allow just one farmer to collect 4100 eggs a day, instead of 2800 previously.
And, finally, that darling of our age, artificial intellect, is already actively analyzing all the data that comes from such gadgets. And robots are coming, too, in fact they already do a lot of good in packaging and delivering the products to those ordering them.
To rub it in, all that is not a project, devised by dreamers in laboratories. We are talking about something that works all over Russia here and now, raising – to repeat – agricultural productivity by 55 per cent in ten years.
Let’s see what these facts mean for our common future. The planet Earth is currently been populated by over 8.2 billion people. If it is possible to raise productivity of agriculture on the planet in general by 55 per cent, then it means, among other things, that over 12.7 billion of people may be comfortably fed. And here we only have the new technologies at their current stage, so we may well hope for their further progress.
To remind, there are some theorists who produce their mathematical models, saying that there’ll be about 10 billion people on Earth around the year 2080, and the populace of the planet will peak up at that and stay around that figure, and then go down. If you are interested, the name of the prophet is Mikhail Denisenko, and he is the Director of Institute of Demography of Moscow’s Higher School of Economy. And ten billion people look easier to feed.
Well, you know us, Russians. When it comes to science, not rumors, we are terribly optimistic about next to everything. But, in any case, you may want to say: all right, but how about arable lands and water, surely we are faced with some terrible global disaster over their availability?
And again these Russians are raining their optimism on all kind of killjoys. 44 per cent of Russia’s known and already available arable lands are staying unused, says the statistics. We, simply speaking, do not need it, being even now one of the world’s leading exporters of wheat and many other products. While our water resources are, shall we say, very visible from a plane flying along the length of the country, with countless rivers and lakes everywhere. And that’s only one country, admittedly, it’s the biggest country in the world. Though not everyone can grow real good basmati rice.
Here it might be appropriate to quote a bit from the speech of J.D.Vance, the Vice President of the US (and a proud husband of a wonderful Indian lady). He mentioned the West, “where some in our leadership class seem stricken by self-doubt and even fear of the future. To them, humanity is always one bad decision away from catastrophe.
The world will soon end, they tell us, because we’re burning too much fuel or making too many things or having too many children. And so rather than invest in the future, they too often retreat from it. Some of them pass laws that force their nations to use less power. They cancel nuclear and other energy generation facilities, even as their choices, the choices of these leaders, lead to more dependence on foreign adversaries.
Meanwhile, their message to their friends, to countries like India, is to tell them that they’re not allowed to grow”.
Vice President’s speech tells us that Russia is not a global monopolist for optimism. One may only wish for a world of powers, considerate and respectful towards each other. And that world will surely not starve and will not have to fight for land and water.
Dmitry Kosyrev is a Russian writer, author of spy novels and short stories. He also did columns for the Pioneer and Firstpost.com
