Article received on December 23, 2020.
The relevance of the study stems from the fact that today digital technologies cover most areas of the economy of modern developed countries. Agriculture as a strategic sector for Russia is no exception. From growing plants, using fertilizers, cultivating fields, harvesting, and machinery that will reduce manual labour and costs while increasing productivity and fertility, agriculture has gradually come to a new stage — the introduction of IT technologies [5].
Various scholarly papers on the use of information technologies in accounting and audit have been published in international journals. But the most significant papers, including those by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, Michael Chui, James Manyika, Mehdi Miremadi, and others, address the issue of change in trading, IT companies, financial industries, etc. It is very difficult to find research results on the use of IT technologies in agriculture.
The purpose of this article is to show how today IT technologies are used in agriculture, which areas are the most promising for the introduction of IT technologies, how they can be used in accounting and internal audit, what positive economic effect it can bring to agricultural organizations.
About 70% of farms in the U.S., Canada, and Europe use smart technologies in agriculture. Russian farmers are far from such figures, but the need for digital technologies is growing. According to experts, digitalization will help the Russian agro-industrial complex to make a powerful leap forward.
The introduction of digital technologies into direct agricultural production within a farm is happening one way or another, although not at a fast enough pace. In particular, the use of specialized software products such as "Istoriya Polya" [History of Field], "Meteomonitor-AGRO", "GEO-plan", "Farm Works" was reported by only 7% of respondents.
The picture is somewhat different in terms of the practical use of the software by farmers for accounting and statistical reporting, as well as production process management. The use of automated management and accounting systems developed by "1C" and its franchise partners was reported by more than a quarter of the farmers surveyed. And although the vast majority of cases refer to the use of "1C: Accounting", specialized solutions built on the basis of "1C: Enterprise 8", such as "Agricultural Enterprise Management", "Satellite Monitoring", and others are gradually entering the practice of farms.