RURAL INNOVATIONS

Agrarian sector in Azerbaijan is stepping onto a new stage of development and, according to the new leadership of the Ministry of Agriculture, the main focus will be on the use of innovative technologies. “Our main priorities are to provide citizens with quality agricultural products and to prevent the outflow of foreign currency. The ministry will follow three basic principles: to support villagers and farmers, to achieve proper management in agriculture and to introduce innovations,” Minister Inam Kerimov said.

While the ministry begins the implementation of its plans, the summer season is almost over and the farmers report their main results. According to statistical data, plans to collect and harvest grain will be fulfilled despite a whole set of problems that farmers have to deal with.

Transition to electronic system

According to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, the main challenge of national agrarian sector is making it a high-tech industry. “Modern technologies make it possible to increase yield several times. We must import into Azerbaijan both agrotechnical and water supply technologies. Modern irrigation systems make it possible to use every inch of the land with maximum efficiency. We should bring these technologies to Azerbaijan and finally introduce the system of electronic agriculture,” president said.

As for the last system, I. Aliyev has already allocated ₼2 million to the Ministry of Agriculture from the Reserve Fund of the President for the initial stage of the system development.

In recent years, the need to introduce such a system has been actively discussed and supported. Initially, it was planned to create an electronic system that would allow full monitoring and analysis of agricultural efficiency in the country. This system will combine the subsystems used to register producers of agricultural products (farmers), identify land areas allocated for agricultural works, register and identify animals, their health status and productivity. It will also include the management of applications for financing of agricultural projects, a system for crediting farmers and leasing operations, as well as the registration of agricultural machinery. This data will be processed online in a single processing center, which will allow to identify problems in the agricultural sector of Azerbaijan as soon as possible and to make prompt decisions on improving the efficiency of national agriculture.

As a result of joint work with experts from the European Union, Azerbaijan announced the established an extensive online database that will contain all information about farming households in the country. This work was conducted in 2016-2017 as part of the EU-funded (€1.24 million) technical assistance project.

The purpose of this electronic database was to ensure fair and transparent distribution of subsidies for the development of agriculture, providing reliable and accurate data for building agricultural policies and assessing their effectiveness.

Although the project looks quite promising, it still has to provide tangible results. “The electronic farming system in Azerbaijan does not exist in the form, which we would like to see it. It is necessary to attract foreign specialists. Works in this direction are underway. We should rationally use every inch of the land,” President Aliyev noted commenting on the need for a rational approach in the agricultural sector.

According to foreign experts, in order to speed up the introduction of the electronic system in agriculture, it is necessary to make the process of submitting online applications simple and understandable so that farmers can easily go through this procedure on their own, as many of them have a fear of new technologies. Even in such an advanced agrarian country as Holland, the establishment of electronic agricultural management system had difficulties and the reluctance of farmers to deal with online reporting. Therefore, experts also recommend at the first stage to apply certain preferences for those who prefer the electronic platform to stimulate the growth of online applications.

Scientific approach

Establishment of electronic agriculture is also one of the nine goals of the Strategic Roadmap for the Production and Processing of Agricultural Products. As of January 1, 2018, the monitoring data collected on the implementation of the tasks set in the roadmap shows that this task has been completed by 30% in full and by 30% partially.

As for the other eight goals, in general they are also less than half fulfilled. The situation is better with ensuring the stability of food security - work in this direction has been completed by almost 70%. But at the same time, attempts to increase the production potential of the agrarian sector on the basis of “value chain”, which implies the establishment of agricultural cooperatives and scientific justification for the zoning of croplands in various branches of crop production, are not yet successful,.

By the way, active involvement of science in the agrarian sector is another important goal for the near term. It can also help to raise the level of special education. The roadmap target is complete only for 23%, which indicates the need to increase the implementation of new projects in the near future.

The lack of qualified agronomists, sometimes a very low level of awareness of farmers about the intricacies of the production process and the available opportunities in many ways hamper the pace of development. The fact is that the unsuccessful choice of crops for sowing, wrong watering system, excessive use of chemical fertilizers, inability to distinguish genetically modified seeds from natural ones cannot only destroy a small farm business but also cause the soil to become unfit for years to come. “Our main priorities include the improvement of the Azerbaijan State Agrarian University and study of international experience. Thanks to mobilizing scientific resources in the agrarian sphere, it is possible to solve existing problems,” Minister I. Kerimov said.

In other words, scientific opportunities must be made accessible to all categories of farmers. This is not only about training of a sufficient number of staff but also the financial ability of medium and small-scale farmers to recruit consultants in the production process.

Technological progress

In addition to the challenges described above, the crop producers of Azerbaijan today face also purely technical problems, consisting, for example, in an elementary shortage of high-quality machinery for harvesting.

There is another problem in this area: experts note that there is an acute deficit of personnel able to manage modern technology. This is the main reason why we periodically receive information from rural areas about accidents related to improper management of tractors, harvesters, etc.. Also, those who operate the machinery do not know elementary rules of maintenance, which leads to its rapid deterioration.

As noted by the Ministry of Agriculture, 15 thousand units of agricultural equipment was identified as malfunctioning in 2017. “This basically includes machinery that has been used for more than 20 years. We periodically monitor and identify malfunctions and warn the owners about them. Last year, about 100 pieces of equipment were taken out of service,” said the head of the Main State Technical Inspection of the Ministry of Agriculture Aghakishi Aliyev. However, farmers often continue to use faulty equipment, which leads to losses during harvesting. At the same time, Mr. Aliyev assures that the reason for this decision of farmers is not the lack of technology, but their desire to collect the ripened harvest as soon as possible. “But if they followed the order of collection, they would not have to use old equipment,” Aliyev said.

He said that the country has enough equipment to collect the whole grain crop. At the same time, at the end of this year a new batch of agricultural machines will be brought in to meet the most modern requirements.

Recently, President Ilham Aliyev also said that more than 5,000 pieces of equipment (₼160 million) will be purchased in 2018. Last year, 10,000 units of equipment were purchased. “But from now on, transparency must be fully ensured in this area. Ministry of Agriculture is responsible to monitor the implementation of this task. Our technical park must be fully inspected. We need only verified proposals on the purchase of new equipment, which should meet the general dynamics of development of agricultural sector and reflect our priorities,” President noted.

Thus, an innovative approach to solving agricultural problems, in addition to scientific and theoretical consultations, will focus on solving specific practical problems of farmers. This is the only way to achieve quantitative and qualitative changes in the industry and turn it into one of the leaders of the non-oil sector of the national economy.

History of the agrarian sector of Azerbaijan during independence

Thanks to the land reform in Azerbaijan, 1.4 million hectares of fertile arable lands were handed over to rural residents for perpetual use; collective and state farms were replaced with private farming households. This information is taken from the newly published book of writer and publicist Zeytulla Jabbarov, Food security. Azerbaijani bread. It contains articles, reports, and studies conducted by the author for more than two decades and covering the period of independent Azerbaijan.

According to the book, as a result of reforms, the entrepreneurship movement became widely popular, new structures began to operate under the new conditions of the market economy. And although grain growers grew crops, the dependence on imports was over 60%. Food, grain and even bakery products were supplied to the republic from Russia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. The national leader Heydar Aliyev signed the Decree on Ensuring Food Security, adopted the State Program on expanding the production of volumes of wheat, the development of domestic selection and seed production. A wisely planned agrarian policy began to yield good results, the volumes of food grain production increased.

The book is written for a wide range of readers including the scientists, agrarians, teachers, and university students.