Speaking on the cooperation in Ukraine we have to keep in mind that forms of cooperation can be different:

• cooperation of agricultural enterprises;
• cooperation of small farmers;
• cooperation of private households.

Until recently, agricultural enterprises in Ukraine have not been developing because of the leading trend of consolidation of agri-businesses into existing and newly formed enterprises in the real and virtual holdings. Moreover, when it comes to dairy business, the key to the competitiveness of the farming economy is cow productivity. To improve cow productivity it is not necessary to join a cooperative. Those who have hundreds of thousands of hectares of land will not unite into cooperatives, but the mid-size producers eventually invent some form of cooperation that allow them to be more competitive. For example, they may cooperate for the purchase or production of feed, for milk sales and processing, etc. For the development of such forms of cooperation nothing is needed, just time.

Considering small farmers cooperation, we mean their spontaneous cooperation: one farmer owns a planter, another has mowers. They give them to each other as neighbors, to use. But such farms are usually focused on crop production because livestock business requires much larger investments. Those who still keep cows need to bear additional overheads. For example, four farmers want to buy forage harvester or baler. They have money and they are ready to chip in on the equipment. But the question arises: who this equipment will be registered to, where it will actually be located, who will bear the cost of its repair and operation and what will be the order of its use? It is impossible to effectively address these issues within the framework of informal cooperation. Step by step farmers come to the conclusion about the necessity of registering the cooperative entity. But this means more overhead. It is easier and cheaper for the farmers just to rent a press or combine. These are purely practical issues that break the idea of ​​cooperation of small farmers. Without the state support such cooperation will slip.

Cooperation of private households is even more dependent on the state support. Indeed, in the previous example the farmers at least had money for the baler. The private households just do not have money. And even if they had, it would be much more complicated to collect the money from 100 or 200 members of the cooperative than from 4-5 farmers. Besides of that, these four or five farmers are the people who make decisions, so each of them can keep control in their cooperative. If the cooperative consists оf, say, 100 individuals, the weight of each voice gets devaluated, so this voice can remain unheard. This is another important demotivating factor. Therefore, cooperation of private households is simply impossible without the strong state support.

Of course, the government should decide on priorities and make their decision about what sort of support and to whom to provide. It is also necessary to answer the question: is it important for us to facilitate self-employment in the countryside? Once the decision about the state support is made, then the transparent rules for its granting must be transparent and conditions of access truly equal (no competition commissions!).

It is important to stress on the sustainability rules. Even if these rules are the best, but they are constantly changing, people simply would not believe them and nothing will budge.