(within the frame of the Grant Programme in the Organic Sector supported by Switzerland)
About the company
Food For Thoughts LLC is a company founded by three partners 10 years ago, specialising in cultivation, cleaning, and processing of walnuts.
The walnut garden planted in 2016-2017 on a 38-hectare area on the outskirts of Poltava has now 3,762 trees of Ukrainian walnut varieties.
From the very beginning, the garden was planted based on the principles of organic and sustainable production. The founders abandoned intensive cultivation so that the trees could live their full lives for decades. In addition, the farm uses chiselling, a soil cultivation technique that allows retaining more rainwater, as the garden does not have centralised irrigation.
In 2020, the garden was granted the organic status, and in 2024, the first commercial walnuts were harvested, and company started to develop its own processing. For this purpose, the farm constructed its own processing facilities for high quality nut processing.
Food For Thoughts LLC actively cooperates with the Institute of Pig Production and Agroindustrial Production of the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences of Ukraine, establishing joint research on the development of technologies for the use of walnut phytomass plantations as a means of technological safety and veterinary protection of organic livestock.
Support with the Grant Program and implemented activities
The processing plant of Food For Thoughts LLC is equipped with a modern line that includes washing, cleaning, calibration, shelling, sorting, as well as packing walnut kernels. The company is already represented on the domestic market in a number of Ukrainian retail chains, but to improve the quality of its products it needed its own refrigeration equipment to extend shelf life, minimise losses, and enter new sales channels.
Thanks to grant support within the project “Women Entrepreneurship in the Organic Sector” (WEOS), this problem has been solved. With the grant money, the company purchased and installed a professional cold storage chamber that ensures a stable temperature of +3-5 °C. The design of the chamber is modular allowing for future expansion.
Installation of refrigeration equipment helped the company to preserve about 1.5 tonnes of walnut kernels and ensure continuous delivery of products, which brought economic benefits of about UAH 650,000.
The grant also allowed to purchase shelving, cabinets and other structures to equip the production facility, as the company is actively preparing for certification under the international FSSC 22000 standard. Compliance with the requirements of this standard provides for the orderly and safe storage of raw materials, semi-finished and finished products.
Plans for the future
Already during the project implementation, Food For Thoughts LLC began preparations for FSSC 22000 certification to enter international markets.
The company plans to expand its line of packaged products for the domestic market. Earlier, it started producing walnut oil, and is also expanding its cooperation with other organic operators to produce new products.
Advice from the co-founder
Yuliia Radchenko: “Organic farming requires long-term and significant investments, solid knowledge and skills, a well-coordinated team, as well as genuine optimism and faith in the success of your business. Success comes when quality becomes a habit. No matter what you do, the main thing is to do it well. This is the principle we follow in our business. I would like to quote Charlie Munger, Vice President of Berkshire Hathaway, one of the most successful companies in the world: “Take a simple idea and take it seriously.”
* Grant Program in the Organic Sector is funded by Switzerland and implemented within the framework of
- the project “Women Entrepreneurship in the Organic Sector” (WEOS) implemented by ICO “Information Center “Green Dossier” in partnership with Organic Initiative Public Association, and
- the Swiss-Ukrainian Programme “Higher Value Added Trade from the Organic and Dairy Sector in Ukraine” (QFTP) implemented by the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL, Switzerland) in partnership with SAFOSO AG (Switzerland).