Assessment of the state and prospects for development of digital transformation of agriculture in the Russian regions

The article examines the processes of digital transformation of the agro-industrial complex in the regional context. The relevance of the work is due to the need to overcome the interregional digital gap in agriculture, as well as the challenges of achieving technological sovereignty of the agricultural sector in the face of external sanction pressure. The purpose of the work is a comprehensive assessment of the level of digitalization of agriculture in the subjects of the Russian Federation, identification of leaders and outsiders, analysis for factors hindering the introduction of digital technologies. The methodological base includes the author's methodology of the integrated index of the digital maturity of the agro-industrial complex based on three groups of indicators (infrastructure security, implementation of specific digital solutions, human resources and innovation potential). As a result of the study, three groups of regions were identified according to the level of digital maturity of the agro-industrial complex, key barriers (infrastructural, personnel, financial) were identified and directions of state policy to stimulate digitalization were proposed. It has been established that almost half of the subjects of the Russian Federation demonstrate extremely low digital activity, which threatens food security and increases territorial inequality. The paper also conducted a comparative analysis with the agricultural regions of India and Brazil, which demonstrated a similar problem of regional differentiation, but with different tools to overcome it. The scientific novelty lies in the development of the author's methodology for the integrated assessment of digitalization of the regional agro-industrial complex. The practical significance of the results lies in the possibility of their use in adjusting the development strategies of the agro-industrial complex of the subjects of the Russian Federation.

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