Animal breeding sector of Ukraine. Sector outlook in one video.
“Modern Animal Breeding – Potential for Investing to Ukraine”. Current issues of Ukrainian animal breeding sector and future perspectives were discussed during the webinar that was organized by the German-Ukrainian Agropolitical Dialogue during Euro Tier Digital.
"Unfortunately, there is a tendency in Ukraine to reduce the production of livestock products," said Roman Leshchenko, Ukraine's Minister of Agriculture and Food.
The Ministry of Agriculture is trying to create a framework for development of animal husbandry. A state support program is being designed to provide farmers with a planning horizon of at least 10 years. Among the most important measures, the head of the ministry considers subsidies for investments in the construction and re-equipping facilities for keeping the animals, tax benefits and approximation of production standards to the EU directives on animal welfare and environmental protection. Other important measures are: support for the implementation of digitalization processes, development of animal identification system, reduction of import duties for breeding animals, and development of livestock cooperatives. In his opinion, land reform and protection of property rights are especially important.
Alex Lissitsa, co-chair of the DLG working group for Eastern Europe, stressed: "Livestock-breeding is a type of business that requires not only significant investment, which can only be refinanced over longer periods of time. This business is also connected with significant risks, especially when we think of diseases such as African swine fever or bird flu. In addition, there is still growing pressure from society, which encourages farmers to develop new strategies to increase animal welfare and reduce emissions. This shows that investment decisions in animal husbandry must be prepared with special care to take all these points into account".
Dutch farmer Kees Huizinga has been working in Ukraine already since 2001. He is in charge of the Kishchentsi farm working on 15,000 hectares of arable land, 400 sows and 1,600 dairy cows. Company started investing in dairy farming in 2006 when they took over an old dairy farm with a capacity of 4 liters per cow per day. By now Kyschentsi has invested about 10 million euros in the development of milk production.
Production costs range from 0.25 to 0.28 euros per liter. In the near future, the plans are to invest another 10 million euros to increase the number of dairy cows to 3,500 cows. Kees expects to reduce costs to 0.23 euros per liter of milk. The native of the Netherlands believes that “Sustainable development and expansion of milk production in Ukraine is quite possible. In addition to resources such as land and water, cheap and long-term loans, good vocational schools and a stable policy are important factors.”
You can watch the video in German: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4ON7XI8g5E4
Script
05:30 - Uwe Feiler, Parl. Staatssekretär bei der Bundesministerin für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft
11:45 - Alex Lissitsa, Co-Vorsitzender des DLG-Länderarbeitskreises Osteuropa
22:55 - Roman Leschtschenko, Minister für Agrarpolitik und Ernährung der Ukraine
58:35 - Oksana Jurchenko, Präsidentin des Verbandes der Schweinehalter der Ukraine
01:23:30 - Ganna Lavrenjuk, Generaldirektorin des Verbandes der Milchproduzenten
01:42:30 - Vadym Chagarovskij, Vorsitzender des Verbandes der Molkereien der Ukraine
02:01:30 - Cornelis Huizinga, Geschäftsführer von Kishchentsy GmbH
02:14:05 - Pavlo Krainyk, Stellvertretender Geschäftsführer der Josera Ukraine LLC