EkoNiva’s Spring Academy educational programme has started at the company's operations in Voronezh, Ryazan, Kaluga, Orenburg and Novosibirsk oblasts. This year, about 200 students from Russian higher and secondary vocational agricultural institutions will take part in the training.

Within two months, EkoNiva's enterprises will host 16 crash courses, each of them providing a one-week seminar series on modern livestock farming technologies, agronomy, engineering and economics. For future agricultural professionals, the instructors have arranged various team-building activities, informative lectures by the holding's top specialists and, most importantly, a number of practicals on production sites.

The students mastering livestock farming will learn how to use modern software at dairies. They will be introduced to the DairyComp system and the in-house developed programme Eko.Feed. The latter optimises the entire nutrition process, from loading the feed into the mixer wagon to its distribution to the animals.

The agronomy module covers such topics as sowing and cultivation techniques, plant breeding and seed growing, forage preparation and digital solutions for agriculture, including EkoCrop, the company’s own software.

The future engineers will get an insight into today’s farm machinery. In the repair shops, they will find out the most common breakdown causes and maintenance procedures.

For the economics faculty students, EkoNiva’s specialists are going to run a course on the fundamentals of this discipline in relation to the agricultural sector.

‘Eight years ago, we held the first Spring Academy session at our enterprises. Over 450 young specialists have already taken part in the project since then. Some of them are now part of our team and occupy key positions in the holding's operations’, says Boris Morev, Human Resources Manager at EkoNiva-APK Holding.

Following the Spring Academy, the best students will be awarded diplomas and souvenirs. All the project participants will have an opportunity to apply for a full-fledged summer internship at EkoNiva's enterprises and gain a better understanding of modern farming.