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UKRAINE-NORTH DAKOTA FARM CONNECTION WILL BECOME CLOSER
A North Dakota model farm will be established about 50 miles southeast of Kiev.
Ken Rogers Column, The Bismarck Tribune
Bismarck, N.D., Saturday, January 23, 2010
UKRAINE-NORTH DAKOTA FARM CONNECTION WILL BECOME CLOSER
A North Dakota model farm will be established about 50 miles southeast of Kiev.
Ken Rogers Column, The Bismarck Tribune, Bismarck, N.D., Sat, Jan 23, 2010
BISMARK, North Dakota - Wheat grows well in the Ukraine. It's the bread basket of Europe, like North Dakota and its sister states on the northern Great Plains make up the American bread basket. As one might expect, North Dakota and the Ukraine have the same kinds of soils and climate.
But farming in the Ukraine isn't like farming in North Dakota.
Unfortunately for the Ukraine, it was part of the old Union of Soviet Socialist Republics until the USSR collapsed in 1991. We're talking huge collective farms, 5-year plans set down by the central government in Moscow and a failed economic system. It left farmers this bread basket on the other side of the globe with ineffective, inadequate and out-dated farm equipment and other resources. Agribusiness in the old USSR wasn't a going business.
What North Dakota has in the Ukraine is a market for the improvements in farming that have been researched and developed in this state. The North Dakota Trade Office has been courting business in the Ukraine for years. Farmers from the former member of the USSR often come to Big Iron show in Fargo to gaze covetously at the high-tech goliath-like tractors and other state-of-the-art farm equipment.
It has meant trade -- economic development.
North Dakota Lt. Gov. Jack Dalrymple has been state government's point man on trade and has taken part in most of the recent trade missions abroad.
Now the Ukraine-North Dakota farm connection will become closer. A North Dakota model farm will be established about 50 miles southeast of Kiev. The idea is to "showcase and demonstrate new and used farm machinery including tractors, combines, chemical applicators, tillage equipment, grain storage equipment and grain-handling equipment.
North Dakota agribusiness types are partnering up with the Ukrainian Agriculture AB, one of the country's leading agribusinesses, which will also buy and sell crops seed from North Dakota.
What a great vehicle for developing a more lucrative market for the state's agribusiness interests.
UAAB's investors are from the United States and Sweden. The corporation farms more than 100,000 acres. Participants in the model farm from North Dakota are Brandt Holdings, Inc., Fargo; Summers Mfg, Devils Lake; Seeds 2000, Wahpeton; S-M International, Inc., Moorhead; and Unity Seed, Casselton.
It's a flat world, Mr. Freidman.
I like that the North Dakota model farm is a physical presence in the Ukraine. Unlike the state's trade delegations which have brief contact, by establishing a physical toe-hold in the Ukraine, the model farm can have a long-term impact.
The model farm is a lot like the two North Dakota Farmers Union restaurants in the Washington, D.C., area. They represent farmers from the northern Great Plains physically reaching into the nation's urban capital, connecting the realities of farm and food for city dwellers. The Founding Farmer, which opened last year, is located blocks from the White House, and the Farmers & Fishers, formerly the Agraria, is in Georgetown.
The newer Founding Farmers (what a great name) has been profitable in its short life, while Farmers and Fishers struggles, but with new management in place, the expectation is that will change. The restaurants' menus feature food stocks that come directly from farms. They teach the importance, for urbanites, of knowing where your food comes from. And it teaches Plains people the importance of understanding the complete business cycle of feeding people from field to plate.
The model farm and the NDFU restaurants represent hand-on experiences for North Dakotans in dealing with markets at home and abroad. Others in the state should be looking for similar opportunities. Recently livestock producers from Kazakhstan visited the state. Like the farmers from the Ukraine, these ranchers recognize the success North Dakota producers who face with similar land and weather conditions.
What? A model North Dakota ranch in Kazakhstan? Maybe we could export rodeos to them?
NOTE: Ken Rogers' column appears each Saturday. Contact him at ken.rogers@bismarcktribune.com.
