The sale of fir trees in Kyiv officially started on December 10 according to Kyiv City State Administration. .
The cost of fir trees will be similar to last year's prices, with a small pine tree costing from 25UAH and a fir tree from 35UAH. Two-meter and higher pine trees and fir trees will be available from 60UAH.
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Hope there is no embargo on the export of trees.
Sintal is replacing wheat with what they are calling “technical crops”; thats' break crops to you and me – osr, soya, sunflowers.They are citing greater profit with analysis showing margins from technical crops at 60% and "sometimes 70%", compared with 19% from winter wheat.
The problem with financial analysis, it doesn’t always give you the full picture.
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In my experience it is dangerous to chase margins, you need an overall strategy with a mix of crops according to your competitive advantage, machinery policy and risk management.
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Sintal go on and say that they find winter wheat more vulnerable to weather conditions. All crops are vulnerable to weather, they live outside, that’s why you need a range to spread the risk.
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When you have been farming long enough you learn to accept that it’s always too hot/cold/dry/wet for any given crop at any given time.
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They'll have to update their website then, it states their goal is to become one of the leading producers of cereals in Ukraine and Europe.
Agroton has just revealed further third quarter losses..
CEO Iurii Zhuravlov said that the group's "focus for 2010-11 was on reducing costs to become a leader in cost versus yield".
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There is this regular pattern amongst agri-business in Ukraine; spend like there’s no tomorrow, wonder why you haven’t made any profit then start cutting costs like there’s no tomorrow.
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The trick is knowing when and where to cut.
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It takes experienced and determined agronomists to know what can be cut, what can be reduced, what can be replaced, what should to be left in place and what needs to be increased to maintain viable margins.
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Unfortunately there are precious few experienced agronomists currently operating in Ukraine, there are loads of guys called agronomists but they have a veneer thin level of knowledge and are completely resistant to adopting new techniques and ideas.
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While I wish Mr Zhuralov every success I would focus on acquiring experienced and capable people with innovative ideas and agronomic knowledge and develop an agronomy strategy based on proven and reliable data.
A Swiss grain trader has asked Ukraine to probe the disappearance of $30 million worth of grain stocks. "I have submitted complaints in Ukraine in September with the general prosecutor," said director Olivier Broun.
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It reminds me of a similar story about the American farmer and entrepreneur, David Sweere who back in the nineties found $10 million of his grain had gone missing.
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Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko had stolen it and David was told in no uncertain terms to bugger off or they would kill him.
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Fortunately David was connected and knew Al Gore and Al was in the middle of negotiating a significant aid package for Ukraine at the time.
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Al popped in to Kiev and told the president an inconvenient truth of his own; a cheque was duly written in lieu of the missing grain.
The Ukrainian government just can’t get out of old habits and has extended restrictions on the export of grain until the end of March. “Prices on the domestic market remain very low. The market is almost dead,” said Maria Kolesnyk, an analyst at Consulting Agency AAA.
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The WTO maintains a deafening silence on the matter; perhaps we should rename them WTF!
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According to Wikileaks a Spanish prosecutor who specialises on the activities of the Russian mafia in Spain says that Belarus, Chechnya and Russia are virtual "mafia states" and said that Ukraine is going to be one.
Where is the news in that?
It reminds me of the British MP’s expenses scandal when the Telegraph newspaper “discovered” that MP’s had been “fiddling their expenses”. It would have been news to find they had not been fiddling expenses.