Tropentag, October 5 - 7, 2004 in Berlin "Rural Poverty Reduction through Research for Development and Transformation"

Innovative Options for Market Access in Agricultural Engineering in the Ukraine Republic – the Example of an Investment Concept under Consideration of Selected Soil Treatment Systems

University of Applied Sciences Weihenstephan, Department of Agriculture, Germany

Abstract

Like in many other east European states there is a high demand in the Ukraine to replace and to extend the used machinery parks to reach a profitable production. The problem posed is, that most of the Ukrainian farms are in a very difficult economic situation, particularly regarding liquidity. To access the interesting selling market for agricultural engineering, this bottleneck first has to be overcome. The presented study examines, which possibilities exist, to create new perspectives by establishing a partnership between an agricultural Ukrainian farm and traders of agricultural equipment. The objective is to improve profitability for both of the partners. The agricultural equipment trader has the advantage to be present with its machines on an interesting market under minimised risk.
The calculations were conducted for a model farm in Ukraine. The data sources were primary data to farm development possibilities by conducting intensive key person interviews in Ukraine. Secondary data were collected from traders of agricultural engineering, seed producers as well as literature review. The excel-based farm development programme MAX (Ströbel et al.) was used for the economic analyses of the enterprise.
The potentials of co operations between foreign traders of agricultural engineering and Ukrainian farms were examined at the model farm of a 400 ha cash crop farm in the Poltawa region. Since main deficits were found in machinery availability for soil preparation, a focus was given to this point.
Soil preparation is so far particularly conventional conducted. Scientific research in more developed countries show, that under the existing frame conditions in Ukraine mulch seed or direct seeding are very promising procedures. The following variants were examined: conventional soil treatment systems with national technology, conventional technical systems with west European technology, Direct seeding with west European technology, direct seeding with west European technology. The results showed, that under the assumed frame conditions the use of direct seeding leads to a tremendous improvement of the profitability of the whole enterprise and increases net profit to 76.151€ by investing in according machines (machines costs 173.800 €).

Keywords: Agricultural machines, market access, Ukraine

Contact Address: Ralf Schlauderer, University of Applied Sciences Weihenstephan, Department of Agriculture, Steingruberstraße 2, 91746 Weidenbach, Germany, e-mail: ralf.schlaudererfh-weihenstephan.de