Sustainable development of agro-industrial complex of Volgograd region in the context of digital transformation

The sustainable development of the agricultural sector of regional economy is directly connected with the level of its innovative and digital development, which, in turn, mediates the readiness of the regional agro-industrial complex for digital transformation and transition to a fundamentally different technological mode of agricultural production. This paper presents the results of theoretical, scientific, and practical analysis of sustainable growth conditions of the regional agro-industrial complex by means of development of digital technologies and the level of innovative development. The research is based on the author’s concept of the interdependence of digital technologies’ use with the achievement of positive dynamics of the main indices of agricultural production in the region. The paper presents for discussion of the scientific community an original mathematical model of sustainable growth dependence of the agricultural sector of the regional economy on digital development index (DDI). The purpose of this study is a theoretical, scientific, and practical understanding of the use of the scientific and technical potential of agrarian economy of the region for the introduction of digital and innovative technologies in agricultural production in the context of overcoming the economic crisis that resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic and the return of the agro-industrial complex of the region to sustainable growth under Western sanctions. The result of this analysis, according to the authors, should be conclusions about the admissibility of scientific generalizations in the field of economic feasibility and the lack of alternatives to the use of digital technologies as a driver of sustainable development of the regional agro-industrial complex under the sanction’s pressure and overcoming the consequences of the COVID crisis. The results of the work can be used in the concept of sustainable development of the agrarian economy of the region, depending on development level of existing and promising digital ecosystems built on the domestic element base and Russian software use through the Digital Development Index (DDI), defined as a set of the given indices of digital and innovative infrastructure of the industry.