Defiant Ukrainian farmers visit agricultural machinery manufacturer Claydon

The first-ever visit by customers from Ukraine, the four-day trip included a tour of Claydon’s factory to learn more about the company’s Opti-Till® Crop Establishment System and see its range of machinery being manufactured. They also toured the Claydon family’s arable farm and visited other leading agribusinesses which successfully use this approach to establish agricultural crops.

The group included Volodymyr Husiev, Key Account Manager for Technotorg LLC, Claydon’s sole distributor in Ukraine. Owned by Yuriy Kalyuzhnyy, it is the country’s largest agricultural machinery sales company, with 25,000 customers, 35 sales/service offices in 23 regions and a 35 per cent market share. Technotorg is based in the south of the country, at Mykolaiv on the Southern Bug River, close to the Black Sea.

Due to the ongoing conflict this was the first time that Claydon’s National Territory Manager for Ukraine & Kazakhstan, Anatoliy Penzin, had visited his employer since being appointed in August 2020. Fluent in Ukrainian, Russian, and English, Anatoliy works closely with the Technotorg team to highlight the benefits of the Claydon Opti-Till® System to farmers.

Simon Revell, Claydon's Export Sales Manager, says: “The onerous travel restrictions which apply in Ukraine meant that this visit took months to organise but was highly successful. Farmers and supply chain businesses there face significant challenges but are keen to learn more about new developments in crop establishment and production technologies.

“Like their counterparts throughout the world, they are also having to deal with the agronomic and fiscal impact of increasingly unpredictable weather patterns and more stringent environmental legislation, together with greater economic pressures due to rising input costs and static commodity prices.”

Ukraine has a mostly temperate climate with sufficient sunshine and year-round rainfall. The annual mean temperature is 7-9°C, with summer (May to July) temperatures from 18°C to 22°C and winter (December to March) temperatures from -4.8°С to 2°C. Precipitation falls predominately in summer to fall months, with June and July typically having the highest rainfall (67 mm).

Since Claydon sold its first machinery in Ukraine in 2017 an increasing number of farmers have enjoyed tangible benefits from using the company’s unique approach to crop establishment, providing them with a more secure future.

Opti-Till® provides farmers with a way to transition from slow, expensive, energy-intensive traditional methods to a much faster, highly efficient, more financially/ecologically sustainable approach which fits perfectly with the ongoing transition to regenerative agricultural practices.

Enabling any seeds that can be air-sown, from herbs and grasses to cereals and maize, to be drilled at the right time, in the right conditions and ultimately produce high yields, Opti-Till® dramatically reduces the time, cost, machinery and labour required to establish agricultural crops.

It also delivers many environmental advantages, including improved soil health and stability, improved moisture conservation and reduced erosion, along with higher levels of organic matter and lower carbon emissions, factors which are set to become increasingly important going forward.

One of the first largest farming businesses in Ukraine to adopt the Claydon Opti-Till® System, Continental farms almost 200,000 ha and over the last three years has very successfully used it to establish crops such as oilseed rape, soy beans and wheat.

This approach has dramatically improved the efficiency and effectiveness of crop establishment, with significant reductions in the number of tractors required, the amount of fuel used and in the labour required, an important consideration because of the ongoing conflict.

Viktor Serhiyovych, Farms Director at Viktoriya Farm, says: “High-quality crop establishment is the key to farming successfully. Without it you cannot expect to achieve high yields. Our region regularly suffers from a lack of rainfall and to optimise plant establishment, growth and development we must improve soil and sowing operations to retain water.

“Sowing seed at the correct depth, rate and distribution are vital. With our previous drill we had to compensate for low germination due to the lack of seedbed moisture by increasing the standard seed rate for winter wheat from 160 kg/ha to 250 kg/ha, wasting tonnes of seed every season. That made us reconsider our approach.

“When we saw the Claydon Opti-Till® System during a visit to Technotorg’s demonstration site in Vinnytsia our first impressions were positive. We immediately ordered a 4m Claydon Hybrid T4 trailed drill and used it to sow winter wheat. The results were very impressive and for the first time we achieved 100 per cent germination.

“Opti-Till® combines the best elements of different seeding systems. It is very versatile, avoids bringing moist soil to the surface, evenly distributes seeds in bands at a consistent depth, is manufactured to an extremely high standard and been very dependable, with low operating costs.”

Opti-Till® machinery is designed, evaluated and manufactured at Claydon’s factory in Wickhambrook near Bury St Edmunds in the East of England, where it employs over 60 staff. Over the last five years, the company has continued to expand its dealer and distributor network in the UK and overseas.

Its strategic plan to identify distributor partners in targeted markets, actively supporting them and helping their customers’ farming operations to benefit from adopting Opti-Till® has seen sales increase ten-fold, with exports up six-fold and now accounting for 60% of production.

Sold all over the world by a commercial team headed by Spencer Claydon and deployed in over 30 countries from Europe to New Zealand, Claydon machinery is used to establish combinable crops across the widest range of soil types and conditions, often placing multiple seeds, fertiliser and micronutrients in one pass.