Howard Buffett is a long-time philanthropist and farmer. He has been in Ukraine talking with farmers about their future amid the ongoing war.
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Recently, a great friend of our country, a philanthropist, agrarian, investor, and farmer, Mr. Howard Buffett, came to Ukraine on a charitable mission. Of course, we are well aware of the necessary measures for the restoration, optimization, and development of the agricultural sector and Mr. Buffett is an expert in this regard.
The experience and opinion of Mr. Buffett is especially valuable today for Ukrainian agrarians, as they have to farm in war conditions.
“Agriculture is one of those areas that I would say is an area that you could invest in now not in everything not everywhere. Okay, but you know we’ve been working on it. Building a couple of grain transfer facilities one on the Romania border and one on the Polish border. And I think there’s the people we’re working with are very very committed to doing it. But there are also looking at it more like we have to wait till the war is over and we can’t wait till the war is over. You have to invest now for several reasons and one is because you Ukraine needs some of the facilities, so if the Black Sea agreement continues to have trouble, you know, you’ve got to move the grain out. I mean, that’s one of the most important things that Ukraine must achieve. You’ve got to move grain out of this country.
“And so I think that those types of facilities and those and those other things that will facilitate the moving of grain you can invest in those now, I think you could invest in irrigation now. We can’t get U.S. companies that come over here to participate in the irrigation sector right now because of the war. And I try to explain to them, there are areas where you can work that are pretty safe. They’re not 100% but nothing’s ever 100% anyway. if you look at the most recent times the last you know, 30 or 40 years, 50 years, the Ukrainian farmers have had to make huge adjustments. They came out of a system that was a collective type system. They had to make adjustments as to how to learn how to invest and how to operate their farms. And so I think that the lesson is that they are prepared, they’re getting better, they’re prepared to even be better and that should drive an interest on our part in supporting Ukrainian Farmers.
“One of the things we will do post-war after your victory is we will absolutely continue to invest in how to better develop some techniques in farming practices in Ukraine, and there is room for improvement for that. We are very engaged in conservation farming all over the world, and we’ve learned how to do it with small farms, and on big farms, we’ve done a lot of research ourselves, so there’s a lot of space for Ukrainian farmers to improve their production, and that improves the world. I think that as farmers, anywhere in the world, look to Ukraine, it’s imperative for us to see them as partners and friends and not as competitors. I think the future for Ukrainian farmers will be very right if we can get the mining cleaned up and if we can get the investment back into the areas. It’s not going to be easy, no one should think it’s going to be easy. It’s going to be very difficult, but it can all be done. I think you have some great leadership in the government to do it.”
That report was powered by Latifundist Media, with USAID support provided through Agriculture Growing Rural Opportunities (AGRO) Activity implemented in Ukraine by Chemonics International. For more information, visit their website or follow them on social media.
