Digital infrastructure is being built into new farms at the design stage

Russia’s agri-industrial sector is increasingly treating digital infrastructure as a core production asset rather than an add-on. A new planning approach unveiled by IT company K2Tech aims to embed the digital backbone of future farms at the very first stage – project design – reducing risk, improving efficiency, and making large-scale agricultural investments more predictable.

Calculating everything in advance

Digital technologies have become a critical component of virtually every production process in Russian agribusiness. As a result, when planning new facilities or undertaking deep modernisation of existing agri-industrial assets, work should start with defining the digital contour of the enterprise, according to K2Tech experts. This creates a digital foundation – the operational backbone of the farm.

For business owners, this approach provides a new planning instrument that makes the future digital architecture of production visible in advance. It reduces implementation risks and enables early calculation of total cost of ownership. Over time, a clearly defined digital contour also makes it easier to upgrade both IT systems and engineering solutions as the enterprise evolves.

To streamline the creation of this digital base, agricultural producers are offered Solutions Maps tailored for the design and construction of agri-industrial facilities. These maps digitise all core business processes, from field operations through to delivery of finished products to end customers.

Projects are categorised by key agri-industrial segments – meat, dairy, grain, oilseed and fats, fisheries, and winemaking. A separate block is dedicated to engineering solutions, with a specific Solutions Map designed for the construction of agricultural facilities.

End-to-end process control

Within each sector, the Solutions Maps are structured around key operational zones: production lines, warehouse facilities, and office spaces. This structure allows project teams to assemble a customised set of engineering and digital components that can be embedded directly at the design stage.

The national project ‘Technological Support for Food Security’ is focused on increasing output in the agri-industrial sector, and this requires a new approach to building and modernising agricultural facilities. Digital infrastructure must be embedded from the very beginning as a basic element of enterprise architecture. This approach helps avoid technological lag and makes investment returns predictable. The practice of ‘building first and then trying to add intelligence and IT later’ now only leads to higher costs and limits opportunities for modernisation and innovation

Alexander Eder

Director of Business Development for Agribusiness at K2Tech

For each zone, the maps specify a full range of solutions – from network infrastructure, security systems, and video surveillance to WMS platforms, IP telephony, monitoring systems, climate technologies, and equipment designed to operate reliably in harsh environments.

The IT solutions included are based on K2Tech’s hands-on experience from already deployed infrastructure projects. This practical foundation makes it possible to anticipate non-standard scenarios and assess operational risks in advance, including network availability, environmental resilience, security, controllability of engineering systems, and potential losses caused by downtime.

This approach – building digital infrastructure from day one – increases both construction efficiency and long-term operational performance of agri-industrial assets, while delivering more predictable returns on investment.

New investments built on new technologies

For Russia’s agri-industrial sector, this represents an important step toward mass digitalisation at the project creation stage of new agricultural enterprises. Investments in new farming infrastructure can now be assessed from the outset with the digital production contour factored in. This is particularly relevant for fast-growing segments such as dairy, meat, grain, and fisheries.

Large Russian agri-holdings are already moving in this direction. AGROEKO Group, one of the country’s largest pork producers with annual output exceeding 300,000 tonnes, is developing exclusively fully automated production complexes. All processes, from production through to delivery, are managed using artificial intelligence. Under the group’s development strategy through 2030, AGROEKO aims to become an agtech company. By 2030, automation is expected to reach around 90 percent, covering core processes including production, logistics, finance, CRM, and analytics.

Large-scale construction and modernisation of agricultural facilities with IT infrastructure embedded from the outset will significantly improve manageability and resilience across Russian agribusiness, while opening new opportunities for long-term development analysis.

The Solutions Maps also create a structured pathway for planning and deploying new domestic digital tools in agriculture, including ERP, MES, WMS, BI, monitoring systems, analytics, accounting automation, logistics, and agro-analytics. Moreover, the methodology of designing agri-industrial facilities with a built-in IT foundation could itself become an exportable product for countries actively modernising their agricultural sectors.