Norms regarding the conscription of military employees that work at the important for the state enterprises, including agriculture, change almost every 3 months. Within the framework of the project on the food security support for agricultural producers initiated by the USAID Agriculture Growing Rural Opportunities Activity (AGRO),lawyers from the Ukrainian Agri Council provide free consultations to agricultural enterprise managers on proper conscription of military personnel.

Booking for sowing

Granat agricultural farm in the Odessa region, which cultivates 1500 hectares of land, has been growing traditional grain crops for over 30 years. Every year, the farm harvests 6,000 tons of grain and pays over 10 million UAH in taxes to the budget. About 400 shareholders receive fair payment for their land. For people, the work of this farm is a guarantee of stability and access to bread. However, with the beginning of the invasion, the farm came close stop working due to a lack of workers.

"Today, it is not easy to replace agricultural workers as someone thinks. We work with modern methods in crop production, which require obtaining relevant education. We use agricultural machinery that requires months of training to obtain permission to operate. Therefore, workers with the necessary qualifications must stay, otherwise the sowing process is impossible," said Anatoliy Artemenko, the head of the Granat Agricultural Farm.

On February 24, 2022, from the first day of the war, several workers from the farm went to the front. Those who stayed began to help dig trenches and build fortifications. During the partial blockade of Kyiv, the Granat farm sent wheat to mills in the capital. Later, they started delivering food to Mykolaiv and Kherson. Today, the farm buys and repairs pickups for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

The Granat farm, like many other agricultural producers, contributes to the victory by supporting the Ukrainian Armed Forces and helping in various ways during the war. Workers who are important for sowing should be reserved. To correctly process all the necessary documents, the farm applied to the Ukrainian Agri Council for clarification.

"The UAC lawyers since the first days have been helping us reserve the necessary workers who fall under the category of conscripts. They provide explanations and consultations on filling in each document. Recently, new changes for the reservation procedure have been updated, so we will contact them again," said Anatoliy Artemenko, the head of the farm "Granat".

According to the farm manager, representatives from the local military office often visit the farm and distribute conscription notices to the workers. The workers receive them and go to the military office. After they show that they are reserved, the workers return to work to ensure the country's food security.

New rules

Since the beginning of the war, experts from the USAID AGRO Program and lawyers from UAC have made significant efforts to improve the procedure for the reservation of conscripts.

An electronic portal for the reservation of conscripts created at mobplan.minagro.gov.ua is a significant result of  cooworking with the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine. This helped greatly simplify, speed up and organize the booking procedure.

In addition, as part of the project to support food security for agricultural producers initiated by the USAID AGRO Program, UAC lawyers provide explanations regarding the new procedure of conscripts reservation for enterprises based on criteria of critical importance for the economy, which were updated in January 2022. According to the new rules, extensions of already booked employees are canceled. Those who have submitted booking requests but have not yet received responses must submit new requests. Details can be found at the provided link.

Distinct military registration, including proper booking documentation, is important for national defense and food security.