IDENTIFYING STRATEGIC INNOVATIONS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF RUSSIAN AGRICULTURE

The article searches for strategic innovations for the development of Russian agriculture (crop production). For this purpose, the concept of strategic innovations and the methodology of their selection are preliminarily developed. The concept of strategic innovation is based on the ability of a particular radical innovation to lead to significant changes in production technologies in the industry in question. The methodology of selecting strategic innovations includes: 1) the economic principle according to which a strategic innovation should lead to a decrease in production costs (for all crops and soil and climatic conditions); 2) the instruments of isoquants and isocosts along with the arguments that are used to forecast technical progress when replacing an existing technology with a more efficient one; 3) the classification of strategic types of agricultural technologies used for the initial analysis and selection of potential strategic innovations. In the course of applying this methodology, two candidates for the role of strategic innovations were selected – digital technologies (robotics) and biotechnology (editing the genome of agricultural seeds). After a detailed analysis, the choice of the status of a strategic innovation for Russian agriculture was made in relation to the genome-editing technology. This innovation can significantly accelerate the development of domestic seed production.