Sowing, farmers, and booking are the main issues in Ukraine in the coming months

If the agricultural minister Vitaliy Koval does not simplify the booking conditions for workers for small farmers, the spring sowing in Ukraine may be disrupted. As noted by one of the deputies of the agricultural committee of the parliament, Dmytro Solomchuk, farmers cannot book any workers at all. Therefore, if changes to the booking process for farmers are not made quickly, spring fieldwork will not take place at all.

Currently, the deputies of the agricultural committee unanimously supported a proposal to the government that suggests establishing new booking rules specifically for small farm enterprises. They proposed to define small agricultural producers as critically important for the village, which would imply a number of mitigating measures when booking workers. In particular, it is proposed to set lower thresholds regarding the number of hectares cultivated, the number of workers, and introduce additional rules concerning livestock headcount, which is especially important for preserving the livestock complex. It is also essential to consider the seasonal work and base it not on reports from the last calendar quarter, but on the reporting period according to the legislative changes that have come into force. These changes are requested to be lobbied by the agricultural minister Vitaliy Koval.

According to the deputies, the goal of the proposed changes is to ensure the stability of agricultural production and food supply for the needs of the army. The authors of the initiative propose to define farms that cultivate less than 500 hectares of land as important for the national economy during wartime, reducing the thresholds for the number of hectares, workers, and livestock headcount, taking into account the need for seasonal work, especially for preserving the livestock complex.

It should be noted that the minister is mentioned not for the first time in conjunction with words like army, defense, and protection against Russian aggression. After all, the failure of state support for cotton growing in Ukraine in the budget for 2025 is considered the minister's responsibility. Deputies are already questioning how it happened that the announced state support for cotton did not make it into the budget for next year. Cotton is an essential element in the production of gunpowder, needed for making shells.