On Thursday, June 11th, ISET hosted Mr. Brain Kuns, Ph.D. student at the University of Stockholm, who presented his doctoral work titled “Swedish Black Earth: The trials and tribulations of the publicly listed, investor-led, Western farming model in Russia and Ukraine”.

In his study Mr. Kuns had examined four super large-scale Nordic owned publicly traded corporate farms operating in Russia and Ukraine from 2006-2007. As Mr. Kuns highlighted, despite the scales of the farms, modern technologies and, in general, implemented western farming models, these agro corporations are not profitable for investors. The author tried to address the main question – why have these investments not been successful? The study showed that the main reason of these unsuccessful investments was the mixed role that finance played in the corporations – investors were more interested solely in land than in production on that land. More specifically, investors acquired large amounts of land at lower prices compared to land prices in Nordic countries with the expectations of price increase. In addition, some investors did not properly appreciated the unique climatic and other local challenges in the region.

The presentation was interactive and was followed with Q&A session. The audience was especially interested about western investments in Ukrainian and Russian agriculture sector as well as about applications of the study for Georgian agriculture sector.