The Forum "Gardening 3.0" organized by the Association "UKRSADPROM" took place in Kyiv.

During the forum, SmartLands presented a new framework of gardening based on Agriculture 3.0 concept.

Taras Basistyuk-Gaptar, director of SmartLands, noted in his speech, that the company's mission is to produce competitive high-quality agricultural products in the most attractive market niches, applying the concept of Agriculture 3.0, focused on innovation, environmental friendliness, profitability and reliability. "The result we want to achieve is to become one of the top-5 producers and exporters of walnuts and sweet cherries in Eastern Europe," he emphasized.

In his speech, Mr. Basistyuk-Gaptar also identified the main problems of gardening in Ukraine: the lack of a quality management system, low yields, intensive use of manual labor, the absence of irrigation and insurance, the unpredictability of ability to sell the produced goods. "The introduction of the Agriculture 3.0 framework will solve these problems and bring gardening to a higher level of development. SmartLands' mission is to demonstrate the framework of advanced farming and production organization, uniting farmers and using cutting edge technologies at every stage of agricultural production, and to become a starting point of the creation of Ukrainian gardening of the future," Basistyuk-Gaptar noted.

He told that currently SmartLands gardens 50 hectares of walnut orchard, which is being managed in compliance with the Agriculture 3.0 framework. "Our task is to attract investments for the construction of a walnut processing plant, which to be launched in 2018. As a result, the company's value should grow by 4-5 times by 2019 in comparison with the level before attracting investments. In the future, it is possible to conduct reinvestment," Basistyuk-Gaptar summed up.

Also, a working discussion within the Forum "Gardening 3.0" was held with the participation of the Deputy Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food for European Integration Olha Trofimtseva.

"The production of nuts is one of the interesting segments of the agro-industrial complex of Ukraine, which provides a high level of profitability. Gradually, large businesses are beginning to be interested in investing in the development of these promising niches. But the gardens must grow for a long time, therefore such investments will pay off in the long term, and that stopped a lot of investors so far," the deputy minister informed, assuring that she will make every effort to support the new projects of young businessmen.