Impact of the Remoteness of Farms on the Use of Robotics in Regional Agriculture

Abstract

Spatial aspects, including remoteness as one of the most important characteristics, significantly affect the socio-economic development of regions, in particular, the introduction of innovations by business. The present study aims to analyse the impact of distance to large cities and regional centres on the use of robotics in agriculture. At the first stage, the Google Maps application was used to determine the distances between robot farms and district and regional centres; at the second stage, a cluster analysis of the obtained data was performed. The study involved 81 farms located in 32 Russian regions, which use 371 robot units (85.2 % of their total number in the country). The greatest distance from the robot farm to the regional centre is 470 km, to the district centre — 73 km. The cluster analysis revealed an inverse correlation between distances to regional centres and the average number of robots on farms. On average, there are 32.5 robots in a cluster with an average distance of 35.0 km between a farm and a regional centre, 3.6 robots in a cluster with a distance of 114.7 km, and 3.0 robots in a cluster of extremely remote farms with a distance of 227.5 km. Farms with the largest number of robots are located near major urban agglomerations. Accordingly, the introduction of robotics in remote areas will be slower due to underdeveloped transport and other infrastructure. At the same time, rural population commuting to large cities additionally stimulates the robotisation of agriculture. To reduce the technological backwardness of remote rural areas, it is proposed to implement measures of innovation stimulation, including agricultural growth corridors, agriculture clusters, agro-industrial parks, special economic zones and agribusiness incubators.