At the forum at NUBiP/NULES, I met professor Anatolii Balaiev and associate professor Rostyslav Bohdanovych, the head of the department. They invited me to visit the Department of soil science and soil protection named after Mykola Shykula — an outstanding Ukrainian scientist who laid the foundations of soil-protective agriculture long before we began calling it that.

Their museum contains about 200 soil samples from different natural and climatic zones of the country. Among them are virgin chernozems with a humus content of up to 9%. When you look at them, you understand what our land once was — and how far we have moved away from it.

The connection between generations of scientists is strongly felt here. And you clearly realize that our task is not just to stop degradation but to restore life to the soil — at least a part of what it once had.

I also saw their modern laboratories — a place where science, education, and practice come together. It seems to me that it is precisely such places that build a bridge between the experience of the past and the challenges facing Ukrainian agriculture today.

Mykhailo Dragančuk,

founder of No-Tiller