The Minister of Agriculture of Ukraine, Taras Kutovoy, took part in the conference of the Global Forum for Food and Agriculture in Berlin last week, where he raised the eternal Ukrainian proposal that, in order to increase grain production, it is necessary to restore the old Soviet irrigation system.
The minister said: "With the restoration and development of irrigation systems, Ukraine will have opportunities to increase grain production." The minister is optimistic and believes in irrigation, and it seems that the Ukrainian government is on the path to securing funds, because with the consent of the World Bank, it has created a coordinating council to develop a strategy for the repair and modernization of the irrigation system.
The approved strategy will serve as the basis for any finance agreement with the World Bank and should start in 2017. Kutovoy spoke of an investment of about two billion US dollars to restore irrigation to more than 550,000 hectares by 2021. 
