IT in the agrarian sector: Ukrainian programmers create start-ups in the village

Today, the global IT market of agricultural solutions comprises about 400 billion dollars annually. Ukraine is one of the world’s leaders in the production of agrarian products. And this is at relatively small yield per hectare. Ukraine is the leader mainly due to large sown areas. At the same time, most agricultural countries-leaders use the latest IT technologies.

According to The Economist, over the next 40 years, humankind will have to produce more products than in the past 10,000 years, reports an “Agro-Center” correspondent with reference to “Agrarian week. Ukraine”.

Sergiy Skok is an IT specialist. He is one of the founders of a company that develops and sells measuring equipment for agriculture. The company was founded in early 2016. The form of ownership is a limited liability company. The company employs more than ten people. Devices and programs that the company develops and sells are necessary for precision agriculture. Precision agriculture requires the introduction of IT technologies for managing each square meter of the field.

“It can be a system which allows you to save seeds. It can be an agrichemical map of the area, according to which the necessary mineral fertilizers will be introduced. It may be a simple control over the machinery with the help of GPS sensors, which will optimize the routes and reduce the possibility of theft. It may be a satellite monitoring of crops, which based on the collected information about the field, can plan and forecast”,

– explains the expert of the Ukrainian club of agrarian business, Vitaly Kordysh.

Sergiy had to leave his comfortable office and try to understand how the agrarian business works. The man goes to the Kherson region, where he needs to persuade agronomists to buy equipment most of them didn’t even know existed.

Soil moisture control is essential for Kherson region. The land is dry here and requires irrigation. Local farmers who use irrigation systems, still rely on old methods of humidity control. They store information either in handwritten diaries or, at best, in tables.

The task of “Agromonitor” is to provide all agricultural lands of Ukraine (which is 70% of the territory of Ukraine) with agricultural stations and sensors. This will allow providing farmers with agricultural consulting services, which means not just selling “iron”, but selling software and consultations based on the data.

However, the Ukrainian market is not ready for agricultural consulting yet. Not financially, nor morally. Therefore, young entrepreneurs need to sell more, look for investors and try to enter the foreign market.

You need to have patience and understand specifics of the agrarian market when dealing with farmers. An agreement with a farmer can last for a period from a week to six months. During a sowing or harvest campaign, a farmer does not buy anything. Moreover, farmers will want to test equipment first.