REGINA – Kyrat Ebryan was a long way from home, but looking out at the Canadian prairie made him feel like he’d just stepped out his back door.
The Kazakhstani farmer, along with eight others, made the trip to Canada this spring to harvest ideas about Canadian agriculture.
“We have very similar farm types. The technology we have is behind you. Our agronomy is behind too. The more progressive farms are just turning from tillage and improving our yields,” he said with the aid of a translator.
Read Also
VIDEO: Green Lightning and Nytro Ag win sustainability innovation award
Nytro Ag Corp and Green Lightning recieved an innovation award at Ag in Motion 2025 for the Green Lightning Nitrogen Machine, which converts atmospheric nitrogen into a plant-usable form.
Most of the farmers on the tour were partners in former state collective farms.
“We import a lot of equipment from Western Canada. Your (short line) manufacturers are very well known and appreciated. It is a fit for our farming,” said Ebryan, who has 11,000 acres of dryland grain production.
Farmer Sergey Butozov said Kazakhstan is developing the infrastructure to export and handle grain and is expanding its production after a decline following the privatization of agriculture over the past two decades.
Kazakhastan is home to some of the world’s largest private grain farms, at 1.9 and two million acres respectively. The country is estimated to grow about 50 million acres of crops.
“The thing we need now is credit again. It has been hard to put credit in place for operations this year. The world has seen a credit crisis and we are feeling it in Kazakhstan’s farm sector. The government has given its assurances to lenders and that is aiding us for this crop. But long term, this will be a set back,” he said.
Paul Lutschak said farm equipment companies like Morris Industries, Degelman Industries, Seedmaster, Brandt and Bourgault were on the list of companies to visit while the group was in Canada.
“Your brand names of farm equipment are well known to us. It is the best equipment we can buy,” Lutschak said, referring to a pair of Degelman heavy harrows that were recently purchased. The machines covered 28,000 acres this year.
“Nothing else like these machines can we buy from Europe or Asia.”
Lutschak said the challenge is getting service for high tech machines.
“Deere has some training going on to make service for the GPS guided agriculture machinery. But to get into (precision agriculture), we need service companies to help us out. These machines need support.
“Now we can sit on the phone for hours and then there is always the language barrier. In the end, it will make us uncompetitive with you if we cannot get more service, more (machinery dealerships),” he said.
The group visited individual farms and attended the Western Canada Farm Progress Show in Regina.
“If we could have the technology that is at this big show in Regina, we could make many changes and further improve our production,” he said.
“We don’t want to buy something that will be set aside for technical reasons. But believe me when I tell you we want to buy these machines. We want to be able to operate around the clock and to control our (input) costs and be efficient.”
