Delivering Innovation to Every Field: Which Digital Solution Farmers Chose

Today, CWO is the leading FMS system in Ukraine, covering more than 7 million hectares. The platform is used daily by 4,500 users, records 6,000 agricultural operations and connects 15,000 machines. Moreover, it is the No. 1 solution on the global market, covering 50 million hectares.

These figures were shared by Oleksandr Kravchuk, General Director of Syngenta in Ukraine, during the large-scale Cropwise Camp event.

It is quite difficult to calculate the direct impact of Cropwise Operations on profitability. What matters here is that all processes become controllable, we quickly receive information and can make decisions promptly. This helps us avoid points of no return.

For example, we can stop a tractor in time if it leaves the field boundaries, or see weather changes and correctly plan harvesting or assess soil temperature for sowing. All of this is available at everyone’s fingertips. This is where we minimize the human factor as much as possible.

Overall, Cropwise Operations is a new technological revolution in the agricultural sector. It transforms management through the use of artificial intelligence (AI), and this will definitely help farmers achieve better results.

Together with our agronomist, we identified 48 factors that affect productivity, yield and the final result in general. A person cannot assess all of this alone and often relies on intuition, while AI provides recommendations based on calculations and facts.

If we do not ensure field monitoring, risk management and access to information, we will ultimately lose. Today, it is no longer possible to simply apply 300 or 400 kg of ammonium nitrate and expect a good result. A farmer either digitalizes or does something else.

It should be noted that Cropwise Operations provides broad opportunities for various types of integration. Thanks to this, since 2025, we have been actively using Power BI reporting and artificial intelligence (AI) to process NDVI images.

Everyone appreciated the benefits of implementation, as the system significantly simplified a large part of agronomists’ work. This includes the possibility of using AI, when ready-made tasks are now immediately available in their mobile applications — they only need to plan the work and close the issue related to inspections.

Unfortunately, most colleagues on the market limit themselves to the basic version of Cropwise Operations and therefore cannot assess all the advantages of this system. Our company uses the full functionality and implemented it immediately across all clusters in order to provide all employees with equal conditions and equal opportunities.

Thus, the implementation looks more like a social competition between divisions — «who will figure out and implement the next module of the program faster» — rather than an additional workload, where someone was assigned the task and someone was not.

The head of the land department also intends to move forward and record in Cropwise Operations the land plots that are not used for crop production, but where facilities are located — buildings, structures and so on. He also wants to control them within the system.

Everyone understood the convenience and significant time savings. In terms of operational accounting of work, we receive reliable indicators immediately and practically without errors.

Another example: when we started recording fuel costs during idling, which could have been avoided, this encouraged directors to strengthen control over the work of machine operators. Directors now have a very convenient control tool.

The system’s potential can easily cover the issue of carbon certificates if conservation agriculture is practiced. With Cropwise Operations, it is easy to prepare the relevant reporting and detail every chemical element per hectare. Without this system, I cannot imagine where and from which sources all this information would have to be collected, as the requirements for such reporting are increasing year by year. Today, there are already around 50 parameters for each field.

If these carbon certificates are converted into monetary terms, the amount is absolutely equivalent to the cost of using Cropwise Operations with full functionality.

Speaking about other advantages of digitalization, first of all, it is about having a «holding in a smartphone» with real-time operational reporting. We receive a report «today for today» — or more precisely, «today for now» — not «tomorrow for yesterday,» when all we have is a simple statement of facts, while time has already been lost and yesterday can no longer be adjusted.

A very important issue is the possibility of gaining control over the work of agronomists, namely clear reporting on:

• field inspections;
• control over the execution of technological operations;
• timely write-off of used materials and inputs;
• deviations from input application rates in various sections;
• planning and prioritization of work, for example, the gap between sowing and the application of soil herbicide.

We have specific people responsible for specific fields, so in any case, we know whom to ask about action or inaction.

By controlling agronomy, we control the production process and obtain a predictable result. Therefore, the advantages of digitalization are obvious.

An FMS system is a must-have. Without it, the efficiency of a farm declines because you cannot see the overall picture of what is happening on the farm and cannot control all processes.

We now have the history of each field, record yields, bring all this data together, analyze it, look at what was applied to each field, study the cost structure and, in this way, gain a deeper understanding of the potential and efficiency of each field. This is not only about savings — it is about management processes in general.

It is difficult to state the exact benefits of implementing CWO in figures. However, we analyzed fuel consumption and, by optimizing logistics routes, saved 18% over the year.

The transparency of all processes and daily reporting without paperwork are important. If a farm wants to achieve efficiency from its fields, it already needs to digitalize, because the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

Alla Stryzheus, AgroPortal.ua