On July 9, 2014 the people’s deputy of Ukraine Grygorii Kaletnik together with the journalists of VNT discussed the questions of functioning and development of agricultural cooperatives in Ukraine in the programme "Economic Messenger".

Grygorii Kaletnik said: "There is nothing better in the world than cooperation, collaboration of efforts, facilities, finances, which is one of the common patterns of organization of activity in the agricultural sector of Europe and the world. Cooperatives produce more than half of the food production and in some countries this percentage is even higher.

The effectiveness of this method is proved with the help of the example of the activity of sugar plants in France. The sugar plant in France, which has a capacity of 20 thousand tons of raw material per day, provides itself with sugar beets, received from  more than 900 farms. This is a nice example of cooperation.

He also informed that in Ukraine, where 5 million hectares of land is in the use of the individual sector, the development of the cooperative movement will reduce the level of unemployment among the rural population and lead to the social development of the village. As cooperatives, regardless of the ownership are mainly territorial units, that’s why the development of their rural areas will be their important task.

More than 1027 of agricultural service cooperatives are created in Ukraine. But only more than a half are working today. It is a pity, that the rest of the cooperatives are not working. As for the Vinnitsa region, the rate of the existing cooperatives is even lower. From the 88 of registered cooperatives, only- 33 functions today.

This trend is due to several reasons: there is no effective government support, lack of awareness for farmers, lack of leaders who could organize the cooperative movement in rural areas and others.

Grygorii Kaletnik said: "The development of the cooperative movement in Ukraine is possible only with the support of the country. In the conditions of the market economy, it is necessary to establish a closed chain from production to marketing. We should provide the market areas, both internal and external.

Small agricultural producers have to understand that,while uniting in cooperatives, they can use advantages in protecting themselves in the conditions of the market economy from the stronger organizations and prevent the removal of the proceeds from the sphere of agroindustrial production to intermediaries."

President of Vinnytsia National Agrarian University Grygorii Kaletnik said: "Three years ago scientists of Vinnytsia National Agrarian University elaborated the program of the development of rural areas, which is based on the analysis of the development of cooperatives. They are engaged in the research of the world and national legislative base of development of the cooperative movement and ways of its improvement, explore the problems of functioning of cooperatives, the use of new technologies and the development of extension services. The results of their research are included to the educational curriculum of students of VNAU."