On September 8, 2026, in Kyiv, the Ukrainian Club of Agribusiness (UCAB) together with the agency UCABevent held the XVII international conference "Effective Management of Agro Companies" (LFM). The event, which gathered the top management of the largest agro-holdings, representatives of the authorities, and the expert community, was dedicated to the central theme of the season: the inevitable move away from classic business models in favor of innovative ones. The organizers emphasized that the industry is undergoing a kind of "shock therapy," being forced to restructure its management logic under conditions in which the concept of "tomorrow" has become blurred.
Abandoning classic discussion formats
This year the conference format changed fundamentally: the organizers completely abandoned the familiar panel discussions and instead held an intensive in an open-mic format, where the direction of the conversation was determined by the audience itself. The discussion block was opened by UCAB President Alex Lisitsa with a presentation on "broken business models." According to him, due to attacks on infrastructure and ongoing hostilities, farmers once again faced a fundamental choice: where to find funds, how to organize logistics, and whether to sow at all. Nikolai Mazany, General Director of CNH Industrial in Ukraine, noted the unique resilience of Ukrainian farmers and stated that now the one who wins is the one who knows how to work with chaos and adapt quickly, relying on precision farming, automation, and data analytics.
State support and new export routes
The event was opened by Denis Bashlyk, Deputy Minister of Economy and Environment. He emphasized that the government is doing everything possible to support the agricultural sector under conditions of a funding shortage, in particular by drawing on the experience of crop storage. Despite the need for international assistance, he said, Ukraine is step by step removing bureaucratic and financial obstacles to launching new export routes, which is becoming critically important under conditions of logistical pressure.
"Agricultural singularity": a forecast for 2036
Oleh Khomenko, General Director of UCAB, presented a long-term forecast according to which by 2036 business will be divided into four models: Small, Smart, Scale, and System. The main competitive advantage, in his assessment, will not be the land bank but the depth of processing. The largest ecosystems (System) will close the entire cycle — from their own fields and rail traction to processing into ethanol, generating more than 400 dollars of EBITDA per hectare. Climate change, according to the forecast, will force a shift to drought-resistant crops, while a shortage of personnel and wage growth to 3,500 euros will push humans out of routine operations.
AI and automation: from theory to practice
In the automation block, top managers of the agro-holdings HarvEast, IMK, TAS Agro, Halls Agro, and Syngenta examined the practical application of artificial intelligence. Oksana Bobrova (Agrohub) noted the stabilization of yields in the first half of 2026 and emphasized that the main thing now is not just to grow, but to earn: to harvest the crop on time without equipment losses and to preserve human capital against the backdrop of rising wages. Elena Boychenko (Deloitte Ukraine) cited data that more than 50% of CEOs understand the importance of the synergy between humans and AI, but only about 5% know how to set it up, and the spread of "shadow AI" among employees requires urgent data-use rules.
Political block and the transformation of education
In the political block, Oksandra Avramenko (UCAB) and Taras Kachka discussed Ukraine's accession to the EU and the related challenges for the agricultural sector. The closing discussion, with the participation of representatives of the Ministry of Education and Science, KSE, business, and universities, was dedicated to the transformation of education to meet the needs of the industry. A stand of the drone special unit "Rokot" (2nd Corps of the National Guard of Ukraine "Charta") was also operating at the conference: the military were raising 485,000 hryvnias for an all-terrain vehicle for combat missions and evacuation.
Contradictory data
The initial press release contains a small internal inconsistency in the description of the formats: on the one hand, the organizers claim a complete abandonment of classic panel discussions in favor of an open mic, while on the other hand, the text gives the automation block the definition "during the panel." In addition, the quote by Elena Boychenko (Deloitte Ukraine) on "shadow AI" is placed in the source material immediately after the political block, although logically it belongs to the discussion on automation. These discrepancies concern only the structure of the presentation, not the facts about the event itself, which is confirmed by two sources.
Conclusions and announcement of the next meeting
The event once again confirmed the status of LFM as the main platform for exchanging experience in the industry. The organizers expressed their gratitude to the partners — among them New Holland, Syngenta, AgroPortal, RBC-Ukraine, ua.news, and others — and announced the next meeting: the "DoAgro26" conference will take place in December 2026.
