Business in Ukraine

[Gospodar]

Ukraine is very rich country with good soil. But agricultural business is not on the high level. Many livestock are bought abroad. This site gathers professionals in this field. So tell me please - why is it so?

[Pupdaddy]

I'm thinking there probably could be very good farms developed in the Ukraine with yields that would rival any of the areas of the world with similar climates. The problem is the amount of financing available to the Ukrainian farmer...and the difficulty of obtaining inputs like fertilizer, seed and pesticides. In the US..I can access virtually any pesticide I might need within 2 days of determining what I might need...and that's very helpful if you have a small window of time to get an application of insecticide on before the insects create a major problem. I don't know if you have that kind of accessability over there yet. I've always thought farming in the Ukraine would be very interesting with the amount of land and the technology available today.

I'm not sure of the weather conditions for livestock in the Ukraine...I would assume they would be approximately the same as the state of Nebraska in the US...which has lots of rolling hill land tapering to flat dry plains land. It should be good country for fattening cattle in feed lots...the question is "Where are you going to haul them to?". Is there infrastructure that will move live cattle or hogs to processing facilities?..Or is there a way to process the livestock locally and move only the valuable products from them? That's how you make a profit in the industry...getting the product from the producer to the consumer with the fewest number of hands touching it and wanting to be paid for their efforts. There's good feed available in the Ukraine with all the land available for wheat production..and frankly, turning it into the finished product (Beef, Pork, Chicken, or Eggs) makes a lot of sense...because you lower the amount of transportation expense you are accumulating per hectare.

I assume they import a lot of livestock over there...for improving the breed characteristics of their herds. We still move cattle from Europe to the US to add different qualities to our livestock..and I'm sure there are livestock being sent from the US to other countries to improve their herds. It's simply a matter of a diverse gene pool...and wanting to maximize the usage of the best qualities from it.

[bruce MN]

I recall listening to the economist Lester Thurow on some radio program, probably at least 20 years ago, saying that if it would ever be possible to apply the modern equipment and practices that we have here in North America across the Ukraine Valley it might shut down farmig in North Dakota and Monatana. Not sure why he chose those two states. I don't think he was one of those Buffalo Commons advocates.

And people here worry about bad government.  Just how bad could government be that for whatever reasons, practical or idealogical, would allow a resource like that to be so underutitlized? Communism or, better maybe, Stalinism  would at fault for certain, but maybe too it just take 100 years to come back from the sort of  very real devestation that was suffered there on a number of levels in the war. 

Saw this moring that "someone" (Corporations are people, right? At least according to the SCOTUS) is starting to dabble there:

http://www.startribune.com/business/239924611.html

[Jim Meade / Iowa City]

There were stories this fall that China had variously bought or rented 5% of Ukraine's farm land.