Western Producer reporter Karen Briere travelled to Ukraine and reports on Canada’s role in development programs.
SUMY, Ukraine – University students in Sumy are pretty much like those everywhere.
Dressed in the trendiest clothes – women in the highest heels possible – they gather in an auditorium at the Sumy National Agrarian University in this eastern Ukrainian city, about 60 kilometres from the Russian border.
The agronomy students have come to listen to Manitoba Agriculture agrologist Terry Buss talk about organic growing systems, the “green” movement and buying locally.
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For most of them, buying locally would be an odd concept because they don’t have to go far to find locally grown vegetables and other farm produce.
However, the opportunity to hear a Canadian expert talk about farming is irresistible.
Since Ukraine gained its independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991, it has been striving to fit into the world market economy. Agriculture is a potential driving force.
The country has nearly 99 million acres of agricultural land. About 80 percent of it is arable and more than half is deep black chernozem soil.
The resource is there. The farmers, however, need help.
Under the central planning systems of the Soviet Union, farmers didn’t have to make many decisions on their own. The collective farm manager was in charge and each person had a job.
Consequently, when land reform took place and the collective farms split up, the new landowners didn’t always know what to do.
Canada, through the Canadian Inter-national Development Agency and the three prairie governments, has been helping to teach them.
One of the programs is the Canada-Ukraine Facility for Agricultural Reform and Modernization (FARM), which began in 2003 to develop extension services at local, regional and national levels.
It also helped the agricultural ministry, universities and technical schools develop institutions to support farmers.
CIDA provided $6.47 million to the five-year project, including a $1.1 million grant program that saw 29 projects completed in 14 oblasts.
The Saskatchewan Trade and Export Partnership administers the program, which was recently extended to 2010 but at reduced funding.
Mykhailo Dmytrushko, president of the Association of Farmers of Sumy Oblast, the equivalent of a provincial farmers’ organization in Canada, said farmers appreciate what FARM has done.
“A farmer can get highly qualified advice – for free,” he said through an interpreter.
“Farmers, practically, don’t have a place to get advice.”
FARM operates in several districts of four provinces: Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk in the east and Rivne and Volyn in the west.
Valerie Tkachenko, FARM program manager in Kiev, said other extension programs had been available over the years but they were all different and not permanent. For example, the United States offered extension specialists through universities, but when project funding ended the specialists disappeared.
The Canadian program helps train Ukrainian extension advisers, who will eventually take over the service.
Tkachenko said the appeal of the Canadian extension model is its independence and efficiency.
That’s because the largest segment of the farming population is about five million small household plot owners, or peasants, who have an average of 31/2 acres but farm a total of 38.8 million acres.
“We focus on the small plot holders because they don’t know what to do with their land,” Tkachenko said.
These farmers also lack access to inform-ation. Computers and the internet are not widespread in the small villages that dot the countryside.
Roman Schmidt, deputy minister of agrarian policy, is a champion of agricultural extension. He serves as president of the National Association of Agricultural Advisory Services in Ukraine and successfully lobbied for government funding.
“Extension services play a very important role at all levels,” he said through an interpreter.
“We need more extension specialists. Seven hundred have certificates. In Poland, there are 5,000. In Hungary, there are 1,500.”
Schmidt said FARM is one of the most successful agricultural programs in Ukraine because it has shown practical results.
The extension service provides individual and group consultation, training courses and field days. Last year more than 60 training events offered information on no-till technology, biofuel and modern dairy technology.
Each extension office includes specialists in crops, livestock, legal issues, rural development and agribusiness management.
CIDA provided 100 percent funding for the first five years. This year, it funded 60 percent and next year the amount drops to 40 percent.
“The idea is to become self-sustaining,” Tkachenko said.
The services operate independently from the agrarian ministry but have access to a fund of $2.4 million.
Each oblast qualifies for a share depending on its rural population.
The extension service will use that fund and fee-for-service earnings to operate.
Tkachenko said extension has come a long way in a short time.
“Few people in the ministry knew what extension was,” she said.
There are other Canadian projects as well as programs funded by other countries, but FARM is unique.
Tkachenko said more than 30 specialists from Saskatchewan and Manitoba have traveled to Ukraine to make presentations and offer expertise.
At the university, students line up to speak with Buss about the prospects for organic agriculture in Ukraine and what Canadian agriculture is like. A few ask him to pose for a group photograph.
Tkachenko said the feedback from these visits is always positive with one notable exception – everyone would like the Canadians to stay longer.
