Ukraine Risks Losing Value-Added Revenue Without Agro-Processing Shift, Warns Kim.

Moving Toward Deep Processing in Agriculture

According to Novyny.live: Vitaliy Kim, head of the Mykolaiv Regional Military Administration, has stressed that Ukraine must move away from a raw-material export model and toward deep processing in the agricultural sector. He argues that this transformation is essential for the country’s economic development, noting that in 2025, agriculture accounted for over 56% of Ukraine’s total exports. Without such a shift, Kim warned, Ukraine risks becoming little more than a “large conveyor belt for growing a handful of export crops.”

Key Crops and Challenges

Kim highlighted that Ukraine’s export foundation still rests on commodities such as:

• grain
• corn
• rapeseed
• soybeans
• sunflower seeds

He pointed out that despite the massive volume of agricultural output, the country leaves a substantial portion of potential added value in foreign economies.

“We sell the world a huge amount of resources, but we leave a significant share of the added value not in Ukraine, but in the economies of other countries,” Kim stated.

In 2025, Ukraine’s agricultural production contracted by nearly 7%. Kim acknowledged the critical role of large agribusinesses in driving exports and economic stability, but also emphasized that small-scale farming is what ensures food diversity. He believes Ukraine needs a strategy for gradually increasing economic complexity, which would foster agricultural processing and boost value-added output.

By transitioning to deep processing, Ukraine could not only improve its economic standing but also secure a stronger position in the global agricultural export market. Kim called on all stakeholders in the agricultural sector to focus on creating conditions that support the growth of processing industries, thereby ensuring the sector’s long-term sustainability.

These remarks from Vitaliy Kim underscore the urgency of modernizing Ukraine’s agricultural sector, especially amid shifting global market dynamics and the need to guarantee food security. Embracing deep processing could be a pivotal step in enhancing the competitiveness of Ukrainian agricultural products worldwide, which would in turn have a positive impact on the nation’s overall economy.