Miller Magazine Issue: 138 June 2021

79 INTERVIEW MILLER / june 2021 of independent and competing business entities and experts. A very powerful community capable of uniting and standing up for itself. The result of forming such lobby is that for many years any government initiatives and legislative changes related to the agro-industrial complex shall be subject to preliminary discus- sion with agricultural business representatives. For a long time, there is no practice of spontaneous export barriers (moratori- ums, etc.) not coordinated with industry associations, as we see in some competing states. This is a significant achievement and the state has to reckon with it. How do you think, what changes in infrastructure are the main ones? Agricultural infrastructure has changed enormously. It is diffi- cult to detach just one factor. Ukraine has insignificantly changed agricultural product consumption for recent years, which is not surprising since the population continues to decline. However, production volumes increase significantly due to increased experience and manufacturability of produc- tion, such as competent use of fertilizers, high-quality se- lection of seed, etc. It means that Ukraine can and should export more and more products every year, at least until it catches up with other agricultural exporters on yield vol- umes. Based on this scenario, for all these years, internal storage capacities have grown at an accelerated pace and are still growing now, which allows maintaining grain quality for many months in anticipation of a favorable export price. But agricultural products cannot be stored forever, so sooner or later they will be sold and exported from the country. Histori- cally, Ukraine has a large number of seaports, and it is quite log- ical that agricultural products are exported mainly by sea. This segment of infrastructure has also changed significantly. Thanks to (and sometimes in spite of) public-private partner- ships, there is a constant dredging process at the Ukrainian sea- ports, facilitating increase in size and number of vessels handled and stimulating the expansion of existing port terminals and con- struction of ones. When logistics between inland elevators and port terminals has become a keystone, inland logistics faced significant chang- es. There appeared line transportation by rail, private depots of railway wagons, active conversation about private railway haul- age, while the struggle against overloading in road transport is still lasting. It took several years to adopt the law “On Inland Wa- ter Transport” designated to gradually unload and supplement road and railway logistics with transportation along the Dnieper – the largest waterway in Ukraine. What did all these changes cause? First and foremost, the trade market has changed significantly. If previously there were 4-5 intermediaries during transportation from the field to the port, while each earned from 2 to 10 US dol- lars per ton, now there are maximum 2 such intermediaries and they often work with the risk of negative margin. There are many reasons for such situation, but mainly it is the speed of obtaining information, its quality and exchange of such information. Due to the widespread launching the Internet and mobile devices, increase in English proficiency, jointly with