Opinions
05 February 2019
Adrian Schairer, M. Sc., Head of Investor Relations at Ekosem-Agrar: EkoNiva is taking advantage of the window of opportunity
Opinion -Recent expansion of EkoNiva, a Russia-based daughter company of the German Ekosem-Agrar AG, made waves in both Russian and international mass media. In the last 1.5 years the company doubled their farmland to more than 485,000 hectares in operation. With this land area and 67,000 dairy cows on its farms throughout Russia, EkoNiva is one the...
28 January 2019
STEFAN MANN: EVIDENCE OF RESPONSIBLE LARGE-SCALE LAND ACQUISITIONS IS RATHER RARE. BUT IT EXISTS AND WE SHOULD NOURISH IT!
Opinion -The lines between deontological and utilitarian ethics have recently become increasingly blurred in many instances. However, the differences between the two approaches still seem to be irreconcilable with respect to large-scale land acquisitions (LSLA). Norms-based deontologists label LSLA as ‘land grabbing’ pointing to detrimental effects such as...
23 January 2019
John Shmorhun: Decision-making in AgroGeneration is organized bottom up
Opinion -John Shmorhun, President of the France-based agroholding AgroGeneration that operates 110,000 hectares of farmland in Ukraine, tells about decision-making, management autonomy, business performance and collaboration with small farms in his interview to Landlord.ua.
Vertically integrated agroholdings are typical of Ukrainian agriculture. However,...
21 December 2018
Oleg Nivievskyi: Agroholdings can be considered the outcome of the moratorium on land sales in Ukraine
Opinion -The moratorium on land sales is considered as one of the main drivers of the development of large scale agriculture in Ukraine. The moratorium has been in place since 2001 and yesterday the Parliament extended the moratorium for the 10th time since then. It was introduced as a temporary measure to protect landowners in a situation of...
17 December 2018
Natalia Mamonova: Small-scale farms will persist and develop in parallel to large-scale agriculture
Opinion -Prevalence of large farming entities, also known as agroholdings, in the agricultural sector of post-socialist economies raises a lot of public concerns with respect to their effects on the society. Mass media often point to the threats that the large-scale agriculture carries for welfare of rural inhabitants, inclusiveness of land and...
10 December 2018
Natalia Mamonova: The development of large-scale agriculture in Russia and Ukraine follows a very similar trajectory despite legislative, institutional and political differences
Opinion -Russia and Ukraine are often compared to each other with regard to their agricultural and rural development. These countries are the region’s major agricultural producers, in which farmland is the target for national and international capital investments. Despite the slightly different institutional design and the speed of the post-Soviet land...
03 December 2018
Natalia Mamonova: Rural population doesn’t oppose, but often welcomes large-scale land investments in Russia and Ukraine
Opinion -One of the main characteristics of agriculture in the post-socialist countries is its dualistic structure - large and small farms coexist in countries such as Russia or Ukraine beside each other. But how has the relationship between these two forms of farming been? Do they cooperate or compete against each other? In an attempt to answer these...
04 November 2018
Dauren Oshakbayev: Kazakh agroholdings too big to fail
Opinion -The biggest agroholdings in Kazakhstan have one thing in common – huge debts. Dauren Oshakbayev, analyst and director of agricultural economics research program in Center of Applied Research Talap in Astana, Kazakhstan, describes recent developments in the large scale agriculture of Kazakhstan.
22 October 2018
Eugenia Serova: Big and small farms will coexist in the future
Opinion -Large farms are getting larger – a trend that has been recently observed worldwide. Large farms use modern methods of irrigation and farming techniques and achievelower costs due to economies of scale. This way they may be considered to positively contribute to the society by providing food at an affordable price. However, there are a number of so...
15 October 2018
Timur Gasiyev: White Frigate ran into a perfect storm
Opinion -The agroholding White Frigate - once one of the largest importers and producers of poultry meat in Russia - could have ceased to exist in 2009. Then the company experienced a technical default and filed an application for its own bankruptcy. The total debt exceeded 2 billion rubles. The value of assets was estimated at about half as much. However,...