{"id":432659,"date":"2025-09-18T02:59:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T02:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/432659\/"},"modified":"2025-09-18T02:59:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T02:59:09","slug":"forget-the-eus-caricature-of-ukraines-giant-farms-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/432659\/","title":{"rendered":"Forget the EU\u2019s caricature of Ukraine\u2019s giant farms \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At an elite yacht club on the southern edge of Kyiv, prosecco sprayed from a fountain as a live band played pop classics. European diplomats mingled with Ukrainian ministry officials and the owners of some of the country\u2019s largest farms.\u00a0This was a\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/lfm.com.ua\/en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">reception hosted by UCAB<\/a><\/strong>, Ukraine\u2019s biggest agribusiness lobby, providing a gilded day of meaty dishes, strong spirits and relentless networking.<\/p>\n<p>The spectacle was as much about politics as farming, a show of survival, clout and ambition after three years of war. Even Ukraine\u2019s agri barons have been battered, losing swathes of leased land and infrastructure to occupation and bombardment. Yet they remain global players, with balance sheets and export volumes big enough to compete on world markets. What many farmers in Poland or France fear is the scale of these companies and the possibility that Ukrainian grain or poultry could undercut them.<\/p>\n<p>Anton Zhemerdeev, a brisk, fresh-faced manager at TAS Agro, shrugged when asked about those fears. His company controls 80,000 hectares across five Ukrainian regions \u2014 a number so outlandish in EU terms that it borders on science fiction. The average European farm is just 17 hectares.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEighty thousand hectares is big, yes,\u201d he said with a grin, \u201cbut we don\u2019t sell everything to Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Much of TAS Agro\u2019s grain heads to Asia and the Middle East. The EU, he argued, is just one market among many. But unlike Asia, it is also a political one, with borders that can slam shut overnight and quotas that shift with the political winds.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>When Poland closed its border in 2023, Ukraine\u2019s harvest was redirected to the Romanian port of Constan\u021ba instead. \u201cPoland missed the chance to modernize. Romania took it,\u201d he said, referring to investments in ports and railways that captured the trade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At an elite yacht club on the southern edge of Kyiv, prosecco sprayed from a fountain as a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[3971,768,2311,2437,2575,2595,6561,2000,299,1214,6644,10779,7908,36,7062,2441,839,13491,770,7697,10780,11666,2822,8720,1438,332,811,6567,1201,657,771,10781,9917],"class_list":{"0":"post-432659","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-agriculture","9":"tag-borders","10":"tag-climate-change","11":"tag-companies","12":"tag-corruption","13":"tag-drones","14":"tag-enlargement","15":"tag-eu","16":"tag-europe","17":"tag-exports","18":"tag-farmers","19":"tag-farms","20":"tag-food-security","21":"tag-france","22":"tag-grains","23":"tag-markets","24":"tag-middle-east","25":"tag-moldova","26":"tag-poland","27":"tag-ports","28":"tag-poultry","29":"tag-produce","30":"tag-regions-cohesion","31":"tag-resilience","32":"tag-romania","33":"tag-russia","34":"tag-security","35":"tag-serbia","36":"tag-trade","37":"tag-ukraine","38":"tag-war","39":"tag-wheat","40":"tag-wine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115223066329434052","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}