Currently, less than half of Ukrainian agrarians are registered in the State Agrarian Register. Danis Bashlyk, Deputy Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine, expressed this opinion in an interview with Delo.ua. He noted that when developing and launching the SAR, the government relied on data from the State Statistics Service on the number of officially registered small and medium-sized farmers, estimated at about 45-50 thousand.
In the first six months after the launch of government support programs in the SAR, approximately 60 thousand new agricultural producers were registered. Thus, at that time, more individuals were accounted for than official data indicated.
The Deputy Minister noted that with the addition of programs for medium and large market participants, the registration dynamics started to increase. Currently, their number exceeds 126 thousand.
However, these are far from all agrarians, and this is not even half of the entire sector, judging by the registered land bank of Ukraine," Bashlyk added.
In his opinion, full coverage of the agro-sector will only be achieved when registration in the SAR becomes mandatory, not voluntary as it is now.
The current state policy does not provide for compulsory registration. In EU countries, similar registration programs are mandatory, and it is possible that during the process of integration with the EU, the Ukrainian parliament will introduce such an initiative," the Deputy Minister concluded.