— How is it possible that a beekeeper works with pigs or one can say that it’s your fate?

— If somebody told me fifteen years ago that I would work with pigs I would have never believed. In times past me and my friends – companions dealt with export-import of grain legumes. We exported mostly to Belorussia, Western Russia, Baltic countries. While we were searching for hulling machine we were led to Nastashka village. There was such a powerful farm, that its pigs even took part at the exhibitions in Moscow. In that picturesque place of Kyiv region we found an abandoned pig farm designed for 12 000 animals. Nobody wanted to reconstruct it and everyone just tried to steal something. A brilliant idea appeared to make our own farm, we had all conditions to start: we had by products from our main activity so we didn’t have any problem with feeds. The most important factor was that we were young, instinct of enthusiasm and energy, and could see the perceptiveness of this business.

—As far as I know, you are not the only owner. How was the team formed?

It’s a story to talk about. First of all I have to notice that none of us have agrarian education. I graduated from technical school with speciality beekeeper, Ihor Tyazhkyi was born in the family of doctors and has medical education. Stanislav Chuzha joint our friendly family later. He was born in Nastashka. And is a hardware engineer. Serhiy Pidhainyi was the last who joint the business, he is a railroad man. I am very grateful to my companions that they are giving all their strength and energy to agricultural complex. We overcame difficulties together, gained experience together, became wiser together. Couple of times we could lose our business. But we stood out. Thus in 2003 when there was a collapse of exchange rate we could hardly make both ends meet. Sometimes we even had to look for one tone of corn to feed and keep 3 000 of pigs. A lot of enterprises slaughtered their pigs .We were thinking a lot and made a conclusion to keep working and increase number of pigs. Thus we raised the capacity of the farm twice during one year.

—What difficulties did you have to overcome organizing the work at the enterprise?

First of all we faced the problem of reclamation of ex collective farmers into highly qualified employees of the modern farm. It appeared to be very difficult. Sometimes it was a full nonsense. For example the following situation with how to keep the herd records “We have 60 sows and we will show only 50. Due to this we will show higher gains. It took a lot of time to explain that it’s not in our interest to cheat ourselves. But now the majority of our employees are young people, who are constantly searching new ways to increase productivity. Step by step we have come to what we have and now our staff is our secret of successes.

— The policy of “Agricultural complex “Nastashka” Ltd.is to reconstruct farms not to build new ones. Why so?

—Why are you against renting premises and prefer to buy them?

— What is the most significant achievement of “Nastashka” Ltd?

— What plans and ideas the enterprise is going to embody in the nearest future.

— What are the perspectives of Ukrainian pig production?

You can read more in the magazine publication "Profitable Pig Production", № 4, June 2011