Friday evening, November 5, 2010
“Entrepreneurial Development in Ukraine: Small Holder Agriculture in a Former Mennonite Homeland”
A festive evening of Russian Mennonite food, Ukrainian music, personal stories and MEDA Ukraine program highlights
Several brief videos will highlight MEDA’s programs in the same area of Ukraine where Mennonites lived during the last century. MEDA’s projects with small-holder farmers who are producing table grapes, vegetables and other crops will be highlighted. There will also be a special focus on women producers and connections to former Mennonite communities.
Fred Wall, former owner of a manufacturing business in Winnipeg and member of MEDA’s board of directors, will describe his search for his family roots in the Ukraine, including visits to the ancestral homes of his father and mother. The Walls’ village is near Simpferopol in the Crimea and the Enns’ village is in the Molotschna Colony near Melitopol where the MEDA program is centered. Fred is an occasional consultant to MEDA projects, including Ukraine.
Steve Wright, MEDA’s field project manager, will highlight MEDA’s Ukraine Horticulture Development Program which will substantially and sustainably increase the incomes and competitiveness of at least 5,000 small farmers living in poverty in the Zaporiska and Crimea regions in southern Ukraine. The $10 million, five-year project was initiated in April 2008 with major support from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). Wright joined MEDA in 2008 and worked previously in Tajikistan and Ukraine. His expertise includes both agriculture lending and banking sectors.
Ukraine’s current transition to a market economy is raising incomes, driving up domestic consumption demand and regional exports of high-value agricultural products such as table grapes, greenhouse-grown tomatoes and cucumbers, which are well suited for small-scale production. Yet few small farmers are equipped or positioned to take advantage of these market opportunities, and poverty levels among small farmers in Zaporiska and Crimea are among the worst in the country. They are limited by an absence of systems that add value at the farmer level (cleaning, grading, packaging, branding), a lack of post-harvest cool/cold storage; investment and working capital shortages and low penetration of financial services; outdated production technologies; and a lack of marketing and business management skills among small farmers.