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26.03.2013

FAO and the World Bank study the opportunity to invest into Ukrainian agriculture

Agro-SoyuzRecently, the world’s concern about deterioration of ecological conditions and food security started to grow. These issues are especially important for different international organizations. It is not surprising that UN and the World Bank are very much interested in agriculture.

Conventional farming becomes unprofitable. The World Bank and FAO (UN Food and Agriculture Organization) initiate projects on adoption of modern technologies in agriculture. Such projects are successfully working in Kazakhstan and Moldova. Now the World Bank and FAO study if Ukraine is ready to transition to conservation and resource-saving technologies in agriculture.

The first stage of investigation started with joint mission to Agro-Soyuz Holding (Ukraine) on March 17. During this mission Mr. Maurizio Guadagni (World Bank), Turi Fileccia and Vasyl Hovhera (both FAO) visited the fields of Agro-Soyuz Holding’s farming enterprise, evaluated soil density and water holding capacity under different tillage technologies; studied the Holding’s experience related to adoption of resource-saving technologies.

The representatives of international organizations were welcomed by the CEO of Agro-Soyuz Mr. Sergey Prokayev, the First Deputy of the Chairman of the Board of Private Joint-Stock Company “Agro-Soyuz” Mr. Edward Romankov and the specialists of the Holding. During the meeting the representatives of Agro-Soyuz explained the history of the enterprise and its moral position in advocating resource-saving technologies in agriculture.

Agro-SoyuzThe foreign guests highly appreciated our soils, which are considered a sort of a benchmark of soil fertility. Mr. Fileccia mentioned: “There is no vital necessity to transition to No-till for Ukraine. Your soils allow to obtain yields without much efforts”. In other words, the attitude “why bother, everything will be fine anyway” can play a bad trick with our farmers, since the capacity of our soils is not endless.

The guests also visited Production Enterprise “Agro-Soyuz”, which manufactures specialized No-till seeding equipment of various widths. During conversation with Sergey Prokayev Mr. Guadagni mentioned that it is the first time that he visits enterprise manufacturing No-till equipment “by conviction”.

Besides Agro-Soyuz, the representatives of the World Bank and FAO visited AgroKMR and Wind farms which implement No-Till and Mini-Till in crop production, respectively.

Later, the representatives of the mission plan to meet with State authorities and scientists to understand their vision of prospects and potential of adoption of resource-saving technologies in agriculture.

As a result of the first visit to Ukraine the representatives of international organizations plan to write a report, which will allow the World Bank to study the opportunity of providing funds for Ukrainian Government for the program of re-equipment of agriculture and adoption of modern technologies in crop production.