In the past, the elevator market in Ukraine is not one that sees a lot of profit. However, one farmer is seeing that all change.
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Alebor Group is a major player in the Ukrainian elevator market. The company has three large elevators, and during the war, it also built a transshipment complex on the border with Romania.
But in recent years, elevators as a separate business in Ukraine have ceased to be profitable. For farmers, storage in someone else’s elevator became too expensive because of the war. Plus, many of them started working with sleeves for grain storage.
So in Alebor, the group decided that it is worth loading the elevators at least partially with their own grain and started farming themselves. Our team visited the fields of the enterprise.
“We didn’t enter agricultural production for exactly $6,500 per hectare. We bought new equipment and could easily process 20,000 with it. They could even organize agricultural production in connection with an elevator complex and a logistics company and provide their services throughout the region. But everything changed on February 24, 2022.”
Along with the lands, the Alebor Group got a dairy farm with 350 cows.
“When the full-scale invasion began, the price of grains and oilseeds fell. We did not see profits for two years, and at that time they were brought by a dairy farm Iryna Slobodianyk, the head of the farm, monitors the health of the cows here. She shares the life of the farm, team, and cows on her TikTok, where she already has 40,000 followers.
She started shooting videos with calves and farm workers out of boredom in the evenings, and then she saw that the audience enjoyed such content.
“My vlog is more about cows, not professional advice because I see how people write in the comments that they haven’t seen calves or cows in a long time. There are not as many farms in Ukraine as before. And the older generation remembers the days of working on the farm. How they used to work as milkmaids, how they miss it all. Iryna Slobodyaniuk says that she gets great satisfaction from her work. After all, first of all, you have to love animals. And if you don’t like them, then you won’t be interested in this job, these smells, swamp, autumn, rain.
That report was powered by Latifundist Media, with USAID support provided through Agriculture Growing Rural Opportunities (AGRO) Activity implemented in Ukraine by Chemonics International. For more information, visit their website or follow them on social media.
