On 26 September, at the initiative of the Lviv Agrarian Chamber and with the support of the EU project ‘Institutional and Policy Reform of Small-Scale Agriculture in Ukraine’ (IPRSA), a round-table meeting was held to discuss the activities of the AKIS in Ukraine aimed at supporting the sustainable development of small-scale farms. The event was attended by farmers, agricultural advisers, members of the Lviv Agrarian Chamber, and academics.

Tetyana Hetman, Director of the Department of Agro-Industrial Development of the Lviv Regional State Administration, and Lyudmyla Honcharenko, Deputy Director of the Department of Agro-Industrial Development of the Lviv Regional State Administration, joined the roundtable discussion.

In his opening remarks, Ihor Vuytsyk, Chairman of the Lviv Agrarian Chamber, thanked Dmytro Solomonko, Editor-in-Chief of ‘Visnyk AgroForum’, and highlighted the importance of providing farmers with information and advisory support through the advisory services offered by the Agrarian Chamber’s advisors.

Pavlo Muzyka, President of the Lviv Agrarian Chamber, emphasised the necessary steps to support the development of agricultural advisory services and expand cooperation with farmers not only in the Lviv region but across Ukraine as a whole.

Lyudmyla Honcharenko, Deputy Director of the Department of Agro-Industrial Development at the Lviv Regional State Administration, outlined in her speech the main opportunities for financial support for agricultural enterprises from the regional budget.

Ivan Pankiv, Head of the Lviv Agricultural Advisory Service, noted that if farmers are shown the financial benefits of adopting best practices in the technological sphere, they will put them into practice in the future.

Kieran Gannon, a key international expert on rural development and the AKIS system for the EU’s IRRSA project, highlighted the key steps in advising farmers on production certification in accordance with Good Agricultural Practice (GlobalGAP) requirements. Significant attention was paid to the practical experience of the UK and Ireland in providing advisory services to farmers.

Richard Rozwadowski, a key expert on the IRRSA project, emphasised in his presentation the importance of establishing a systematic approach to informing farmers.

IRRSA project expert Kateryna Krykunenko presented successful practices of cooperation between agricultural advisers and farmers in EU countries.

During the roundtable, advisers from the Lviv Agrarian Chamber shared their experience of working with farmers in amalgamated territorial communities and discussed practical examples of cooperation during wartime.

Source: Lviv Agrarian Chamber