Mykhailo Korylkevych, President of the Ukrainian Cooperative Federation and founder of the “Family Dairy Farms” project, spoke at the 35th International Economic Forum on September 8, 2026, in Karpacz, Poland.
He took part in the panel discussion “The Future of Agriculture in Central and Eastern Europe,” where he presented Ukraine’s experience in developing family farming and the concept of Metropolitan Food Clusters.
In his speech, Mykhailo Korylkevych focused on one of the key challenges facing modern agriculture: how to make small farms competitive amid rising costs of resources, labor, logistics and capital, increasing competitive pressure, and climate change.
For Ukraine, these challenges are further intensified by the consequences of the war — labor shortages, disruptions to energy supplies, logistical risks, and a high level of uncertainty.
“The future of agriculture is not about choosing between large and small. It is about giving small farms the advantages of scale without taking away their independence,” Mykhailo Korylkevych emphasized.
This principle underpins the development of the “Family Dairy Farms” model. Today, it is an ecosystem that brings together more than 360 family farms across 13 regions of Ukraine, more than 10 processing enterprises, and over 760 private investors.
The next stage in the development of this model is the Metropolitan Food Cluster concept — an agri-bio-circular hub located near a city and connected to a network of small production centers in rural areas.
Such a hub can concentrate processing, storage, logistics, resource procurement, laboratory and technological services, and training. Farmers, in turn, can focus on their core activity — producing high-quality agricultural products.
Shared infrastructure enables more efficient use of feed, energy, water, and processing by-products, turning waste from one process into a resource for another.
The strategic goal of the proposed model is to create a network capable of preserving and economically revitalizing more than 200 villages across four regions of Ukraine, providing stable income for more than 20,000 rural residents, processing more than 50,000 tonnes of biomass annually, and supplying locally produced food to more than 1 million consumers.
About the Forum
The 35th International Economic Forum in Karpacz is one of the largest platforms for dialogue among representatives of politics, business, academia, and civil society in Central and Eastern Europe.
This year, the Forum brought together more than 6,000 participants and hosted over 500 events featuring political, business, academic, and cultural leaders from more than 60 countries. Key topics included European and global security challenges, economic trends, geopolitical developments, migration, and regional development.
The participation of a representative of the Ukrainian Cooperative Federation in the discussion on the future of agriculture provided an opportunity to present Ukraine’s experience not only as a response to the challenges of war, but also as a potential model for a new architecture of rural development, family farming, and local food systems in Europe.