By OLIVIA BERGMEIER
Salina Post
Dozens of Kansas agriculture-focused businesses and organizations gathered at the Mid America Farm Expo last week, with visitors from across the state and some from outside American borders.
One business, Farmada, works with an agriculture conglomerate named Ridne Consortium, a Ukrainian coalition of more than 50,000 acres of farms working to bring humanitarian aid to people in the country.
A pair of consortium representatives visited the Farm Expo this year to promote their message of prioritizing Ukraine's economy throughout the war with Russia.
"We need to think about and develop the economy right now, not to wait until the end of the war, but we need to do it right now," said Sergii Kovalchuk, founder of the Ridne Consortium. "We need to work harder — we need to deepen connections, business connections between the U.S. and Ukraine."
Kovalchuk founded the consortium at the beginning of the war in March 2022 and recruited 25 small and medium-sized farms to participate. Most farms remain in western Ukraine, a part of the country relatively untouched by the conflict on its eastern borders.
Continuing business in Ukraine through the war is not an easy task.
As the war in Ukraine reached its two-year mark, Kovalchuk and another Ridne representative, Oleksii Khvorostianyi, said they now live their normal lives despite bomb sirens and missiles regularly threatening their homes in Kyiv.
"It's a unique experience. From the beginning of the war, we didn't know what the war was," Kovalchuk said. "We are not on the front line, so you see, we do not even understand what it's like to be in the war, but actually, we feel like living in Kyiv, we feel those rockets hitting, lots of missiles going, and bombings."
The danger didn't discourage Kovalchuk or his business partners in Ukraine or across the Atlantic in Kansas, which he and his team utilized for business advice and products for the Ukrainian farmers.
One business, Farmada, based in Salina, Kan., sells its products to the Ridne Consortium and its president, Daniel Rauchholz, continues close business connections with Kovalchuk and Khvorostianyi.
Rauchholz said that before Russia invaded Ukraine, Kovalchuk and Khvorostianyi worked with farmers to sell equipment and provide consulting services, but the war changed their entire business model.
"They got the farmers connected with the factories that needed the grain to produce it [food products], then worked with supermarkets to get it delivered," Rauchholz said. "They immediately switched to this mode to keep their businesses all up and running and bring everyone together and cooperate."
"It's an example of how the whole country has come together and how economically resilient they are as Ukrainian people."
Ridne farmers regularly purchase Farmada and other Kansas ag products, which began before the war.
Kovalchuk and Khvorostianyi said they have had meaningful connections with Kansas businesses before and throughout the war. Visiting the Mid America Farm Expo provided a platform for Ridne to continue its current business relationships alongside making new connections.
A place for agriculture ideas
Cade Rensink, K-State Research and Extension district director and Mid America Farm Expo planning committee chair, said hosting the expo in Salina continues that tradition of collaboration for local farmers.
Each year, the planning committee looks for varying focus topics for each expo day. This year, the focuses included workforce readiness, market analysis, and women in agriculture.
The expo also provided an agronomy competition with Kansas FFA students alongside a presentation on Kansas flora and the invasive species that threaten pasturelands.
"It varies from year to year, but we try to keep our pulse on some of the new things that are happening," Rensink said. "We were kind of worried that maybe we were flooding the market, so to speak, with too many programs, but they proved to draw the crowd too. We got lucky this year and tended to hit on stuff people wanted to hear about."
Rensink said providing these spaces for public conversations is vital for farmers and ranchers in Kansas, and continuing the show alongside the Salina Area Chamber of Commerce continues these public forums.
The expo matched most years in numbers, but Rensink said that didn't stop the show from finding success for its attendees.
Many attendees approached Rensink throughout the show to share how they found a new supplier or discovered a new piece of technology to use at their agriculture operation.
"I think people still find value in getting together to socialize, and if they're like me, they learned just as much from each other as they do from the experts in front of the room," Rensink said. "But there's still that human interaction that's extremely valuable no matter what walk of life you come from."
Bringing innovation to Ukraine
Beyond the shared interest in agriculture, Kovalchuk said that Kansas businesses offer an insight into the small and medium-sized business spheres, allowing Kovalchuk and the Ridne team to compare and contrast various business practices for the consortium.
Khvorostianyi said that although larger businesses in Chicago or New York may have more significant assets and staff, working with Kansas businesses has allowed the Ridne Consortium to thrive.
"That's why we also have plans to use it to develop here as a business — for us, it is very, very valuable that we are close," Khvorostianyi said. "For us, in our strategy, [Kansas businesses] are much better, much more clever to make trade connections with."
The Mid America Farm Expo provided another stage for the Ridne Consortium, which Kovalchuk and Khvorostianyi used to share their message about prioritizing Ukraine's economy, allowing its citizens to weather the war, and see the other side as a stronger nation.
"Everyone understands, realistically, that Russia is strong, that's simple statistics," Kovalchuk said. "But actually, we need to develop anyway — we need to create innovations and attract innovations. We need to grow more bushels of corn and wheat from every acre than Russia, for example. That's what we can do, we need to bring innovations to create more innovative industries."
The Ridne Consortium works with multiple partners like the Howard G. Buffet Foundation and World Vision to pay for Ridne’s products and disperse them across the country to provide humanitarian aid to those in need on Ukraine’s eastern borders.