How are new agribusiness financing technologies evolving now?

Interview with Darya Novgorodkina, CEO of AgroGloryTime, on the company’s activities and new technologies of agribusiness financing

– Please tell us about the history of your enterprise.

Back in 2001, my partner Pavel Drobyshev, while on a business trip to Transcarpathia, came across a striking fact – the largest former state farm factory in the region was in utter poverty and misery. Knowing Pavel as a serious businessman, the then leadership of the region and the labor collective persuaded Pavel to buy the then state farm plant named after V.V. Kovalev. Shevchenko (now JSC PGA “Zakarpatsky Sad”). The enterprise was completely destroyed and plundered. But the most important asset remained – the perpetual right to use 2,000 hectares of land on a strategically and logistically key area – the border of Romania, Hungary and Ukraine. In addition, there remained a huge (over a kilometer) cellar cut into the rock – once the wine vault of the local king and a collection of wine barrels (bute) in this vault.

That’s why the enterprise was bought. At that time it seemed that having such capacities for long-term aging of cognac spirits, it was the construction of a cognac factory that would give an impetus to the development of the whole enterprise.

Paul invested his own 10 million dollars in the cognac factory and about another 150 million dollars from foreign investors. And the first newly built full-cycle cognac factory (from grape growing to retail sale of skates) started working in 2003.

There were used both traditional methods of cognac spirits processing and blending, and innovative, significantly improving the quality, developed by the Ukrainian Academy of Agrarian Sciences – oak aging, ionization, cold and heat treatment, filtration with cellulose phosphoethyl. The flavor was amazing – many times we made blind tests of our cognac in restaurants in comparison with Martel and Hennessy.

It turned out that the production of real cognac is on the border of profitability, in addition, all the security and bureaucratic bodies were lining up every day to Paul with an outstretched hand and threats to close the enterprise. After Northern Cyprus bribed the Cabinet of Ministers to supply wheat alcohol with dyes to Ukrainian cognac factories, there were two ways out – to stop the cognac business or to pour counterfeit, which was an order of magnitude cheaper, and it is difficult to explain to the consumer why a cognac of similar stardom with a similar certificate costs twice as much.

We made the unprofitable but fundamental decision to change our specialization. And switched to vegetables, which turned out to be an order of magnitude more cost-effective and quieter. The only thing missing was a resource. Having the experience of working with banks (for the production of cognac we took and gave 20 million dollars), we realized that this is a suicidal way and began to attract direct investment through various schemes invented by us. Investors’ return on investment was up to 100% per annum, which you can see for yourself, because all of them are sitting in our open chat in Telegram.

But that’s no longer history, it’s relevance…..

– Now a little bit about you personally …

I’m actually a musician, pianist and accompanist. But I have a management degree. When I came across the AgroGloryTime project in 2015, I realized that through investment and innovation, it is possible to achieve unprecedented profitability, capitalization per 1 hectare of land and yields for the agribusiness sector. Which we’ve gotten pretty good at in recent years.

– Can we talk more about investment and innovation?

Henry Ford said, “For years the farmer has been carrying water to the drinker instead of piping it in. Such mismanagement can be sustained only due to the exceptional profitability of farm labor”.

Well, we don’t have mismanagement! If we invested 200 thousand hryvnias in a hectare of tomato, we will get from it 100 tons of organic high quality, yes simply delicious fruit. You do the math. But it needs round-the-clock care, hourly irrigation, modern elite varieties and fertilizers, pest, weed and disease control and more. The volcanic soil and mineral composition of our region’s soils allows for a gorgeous flavor without the use of harmful chemicals. We also bring in mule (sludge) and pus (manure) from the buffalo farm next door to the beds.

We use chelate, fulvic and humic fertilizers – they are even beneficial to humans and are sold as bio-additives.

Without the right approach, you can’t harvest ten tons per hectare.

The same goes for greenhouses. Before we started building, we traveled to the Netherlands, Germany, Israel and studied all the current trends. Some things were used in their designs, some were reworked, some were abandoned.

– Like what?

We have taken various technologies for controlling and preserving heat, controlling humidity, oxygen and carbon dioxide in the air from various developments and refined them in our own spirit.

Hydroponics and aeroponics so far rejected – expensive, unpalatable, high risks of crop loss, but we will experiment.

On dosvetkovka bushes right now we are conducting an experiment, more details can be seen in our Telegram channel.

There is an impression that all this additional lighting, at least for bushes (not seedlings) of cucumbers and tomatoes – some grand scam. Everyone will see the results of the experiment soon.

Not forgetting the insulation of the ground and the author’s configuration of the greenhouse complex for energy efficiency. Too bad we don’t have thermal waters on our property.

– Now let’s talk about investments.

AgroGloryTime’s motto is to always be one step ahead. If you remember, it was once written about the star of world soccer Oleh Blokhin from Kiev – he does not do anything fantastic, he does the same as everyone else, but he is one step ahead. We are taking an example from Oleg Vladimirovich.

As early as 2020, we had already developed our own direct financing schemes, which can be found in detail on our website https://sevlushfoods.com, and which allowed us to pay investors up to 100% per annum while successfully developing the company.

However, with the advent of war, it became clear that new, modern ways had to be sought.

And it is crypto-financing that has become our new avenue. Now, to be one step ahead required the development of a mechanism for tokenization of real business, which would allow us to attract the maximum amount of money – the size of our site practically does not limit the investment, while the token must be legally secured. Guaranteed to grow in value, guaranteed to make a profit for the investor.

– And how was this accomplished?

I’ll go over the points.

Legal guarantees – we state in the public offer agreement for the sale of tokens, 100,000 tokens can be guaranteed to be exchanged for shares in our parent company. Our token issuance is verified and registered with the SEC.

There could hardly be a better legal solution.

Collateral – our parent company has been using our piece of land forever. You can’t sell it, it’s not property. As Mark Twain wrote – “buy land, it’s not being produced anymore”.

Token growth. Some of AGT’s ongoing projects capitalize the company. That is, new greenhouses, mushroom farms, closed fish farms, etc. are being built with the money raised. Their profitability ensures that each token grows as a part of the company’s capital.

Profitability of the token. The peculiarity of our model is that each token pays out dividends in stablecoin once a quarter, which can be freely spent or exchanged for fiat (regular) currency. Regardless of how much a token is bought, every dollar is invested and profitable. Financial modeling and calculations can be found on the company’s website.

Even a token bought for 3 dollars will bring 10% per annum in the beginning, and in a couple of years it will reach 100%, having increased in value several times. It should be understood that there will still be no fantastic growth, profitability will slowly decline due to insufficient market capacity and other factors that are not taken into account in the model. But there will still be profitability!

And right now, at the presale, we’re selling the token for 100 times cheaper!

– Now for the essentials. How has the war affected your business?

Transcarpathia is the most protected region of Ukraine. We are far away, across the mountains, we have no military, industrial or oil infrastructure. The railroads are a long way from our property. Due to the temporary occupation of Kherson, reduced imports from Turkey and hundreds of thousands of refugees in the region, prices are 6-8 times higher than last year. And while we need peace and victory, not such advantages – now is a good place to start. After the victory, the European market is fully open next to us, and I have just returned from Hamburg with a number of promising contracts for our products. Europeans appreciate our quality!

– What would you wish the readers at the end of our interview?

Anyone who wants to save money from inflation and make it work should invest it in a transparent, personally researched and cost-effective project.

Anyone who wants to develop Ukraine’s economy without taking excessive risks should invest in reliable Ukrainian projects in safe geolocations.

Anyone who wants to provide real necessities that are in short supply should invest in agriculture.

Anyone who wants legal guarantees should look for a project secured by a firm bond.

Anyone who wants a world-class and well-known project, with international capital, high profitability and no stupid banking restrictions should look for a serious crypto project.

I don’t think we need to go any further, do we?