In the age of digital technologies the agricultural sector of Armenia should develop twice as fast

ArmInfo. The Ministry of Agriculture of Armenia is only at the first level of the way to digitalization, and it will take 2-3 more years to come to new approaches and application of high technologies in the agricultural sector of the country. The Deputy Minister of Agriculture of Armenia Armen Harutyunyan expressed this opinion on October 4 during the 5th panel session of the Eastern Partnership on the topic "The Impact of Technologies on the Development of the Agro-Industrial Complex."

In the course of his report, the Deputy Head of the Department noted the main technological tools that Armenia currently uses in the process of promoting the agro-complex. In particular, he outlined those in which today the sphere needs more effective management. "When we talk about the integration of new tools in the agricultural sector, the fragment from the cartoon "Alice in Wonderland" is very suitable as an example - running in the direction of the tree, Alice stayed where she was - without asking why she was advised run two times faster. So we should speed up our actions in order to reach a certain level of development," he stressed.

In this vein, the Deputy Minister noted the priority areas for which special attention should be paid. "The first is planning for prospects, in other words, all politicians and strategists should take into account not only the current trends of development, but possible in the future." The predictability today is not at a sufficient level, but we should at least keep an eye on the vector of economic development and plan our work respectively, "A. Harutyunyan noted. He also stressed the importance of increasing the level of literacy in agriculture, in particular investing in the educational segment. In this regard, he reported on the recent granting to Armenia of a European Union grant of 7 million euros to increase literacy in the agricultural sector. In addition, according to the deputy minister, today special attention should be paid to small farms, the number of which in the country exceeds 317 thousand.

As the necessary tools, he noted the use of information systems based on geoinformation technologies (GIS), which is one of the most promising areas for improving the management of agricultural production.  "As a result, we will be able to regularly collect data that are fundamental to the conduct of public policy, and if we have the right data, our politicians will be more objective in assessing them," he stressed.

In view of the complexities that arise in small farms with access to a wide range of data, A. Harutyunyan noted the importance of implementing the Marketing intelligent system, which is used by the world's largest American company Wal-Mart, which manages the wholesale and retail trade network. According to him, this system allows to better understand the requirements of consumers of international markets. "We should not forget about the availability of such chains in our countries, because the issue concerns not only monitoring in the fields. This system will monitor the marketing chains, which will allow farmers to connect directly with the consumer," he explained. At the same time, the deputy head of the department noted the technology of blocking, which will allow not only to regulate, but also to maintain an effective territorial management system.

The Minister of Agriculture of Armenia, Ignaty Araqelyan, also spoke during the plenary session. He said that the programs envisaged by the agency for implementation in 2018 will contain a technological component.

At the 5th panel session of the Eastern Partnership representatives of agricultural agencies from 20 countries of the world took part.