改变乌克兰的商业模式

It looks a bit like a wintry version of chicken round, but for these chicks, it's a one-way road to the supermarket shelf. Leading agri-business MHP produces some 200,000 tons of poultry here each year. It's one of Europe's largest and most modern poultry production facilities.

"This little chick is just a day old. It was brought from hatchery nearby yesterday. And it's gonna spend the next 42-45 days here eating sunflower cake and grain that the company produces in the fields near here, and then unfortunately he’ll go to the slaughterhouse. "

Producing fodder in the neighboring fields radically reduces costs. CEO Yuriy Kosiuk doesn't believe in outsourcing. With 300,000 hectares of farming land all over Ukraine, he has the space to produce whatever he wants, chickens, grains like wheat, rape and sunflowers, and other meat products, from sausages to foie gras.

"Subcontractors are risk zones. We decided to develop a different business model. And our motto is that if you want something done right, then do it yourself. "

Kosiuk floated 25% of the company stock on the London Stock Exchange in 2008 to raise capital for further expansion. It's paid off. In a December survey by the Kyiv Post, he was listed as Ukraine's 8th richest man, alongside headlines heralding the rise of the agricultural baron.

"In order to be successful, you have to have hundreds of thousands of hectares of land. You have to have the right people to manage the business processes like we do. And you have to have the strength to invest a lot of money into projects because investment and our management style is very untypical."

It's what lies beneath the snow which makes this business model work---Ukraine's famously fertile black soil, the reason the country became known as the bread basket of Europe. But 20 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the agricultural sector lags the rest of the Europe because of a lag of technology and investment.

"At the moment, Ukraine is gathering anywhere from 38-50 million tons of grain, and we can double that production just by introducing modern technologies and that, of course, makes our market very attractive.”

MHP is a home-grown company making the most of Ukraine's fertile soil to keep its costs low. There are around 1,500 foreign investors operating in the agricultural sector. And the country is promising significant reforms to make the investment climate more attractive. Ukraine knows that at a time of global food shortages, it has the potential to feed many more mouths than its own.

Diana Magnay, cnn, Kiev.