Vladimír Sodoma
Despite the grey weather, the green wooded area overlooking the Carpathian Mountains in the distance is impressive. The Carpathians begin near the Danube in Bratislava and extend over the entire length of Slovakia into Ukraine and Romania. We visit the company Prochema Modra, a private organisation owned by Vladimír Sodoma. The company is active in various fields. It consists of three farms with a total area of 1,660 hectares, mainly farmland and vineyards, a contracting business and a retail business selling plant protection products, gardening tools and chemicals for septic tanks.
Wheat and Sunflowers
Arriving in Modra, Vladimir states that on the arable land mainly wheat and sunflowers grow, in addition to smaller plots with grassland, canola and triticale (a crossbreed between durum and common wheat with rye). Vladimír deliberately opted to diversify into different companies, which all have plant protection in common as a focus. Vladimir’s parents worked at the company when it was still a cooperative under the socialist regime. In 1995, he transformed the cooperative into the current company Prochema. He bought the Agrifac Condor Clearance sprayer mainly for his contracting business, to deliver a better service and provide higher yields to his customers. Of course, the machine is also used on their own farms.
Vladimír explains that each investment, including the new sprayer, aims to cope with the current poor market situation. The global crisis also hit the euro zone in 2008, where a recession emerged. Especially new member states were hit hard by the faltering global economy. In Slovakia, the economic decline was over 10 percent within a year. Prochema had 77 employees before the crisis, now there are 40. However, the company is doing very well, especially given the slowly recovering market. Entrepreneur Vladimír speaks with pride about his business, and he has every right.
A real family tradition
During the visit, we met Maroslav Valach, the driver of the sprayer. Maroslav is 28 years old and has been working at Prochema for nine years. Several generations before him worked here; it’s a real family tradition.
“It is a great company, and the implemented diversification even makes it more interesting.” He affirms Vladimír’s words about their Agrifac self-propelled sprayer: “After six weeks, I can say without doubt that this is a fine machine. The boom is much more stable than I am used to, it works faster, and I can continue spraying even in windy conditions. The number of litres per hectare has also decreased significantly.”
“The previous machine did 8,000 hectares per year maximum. The new Condor Clearance has already covered 2,000 hectares now, which bodes well with our plans for increasing our spraying operations.” Vladimír adds. He wants to spray a minimum of 12,000 hectares per year and is confident to exceed this. The fields are relatively small, an average of about 70 hectares, which means a lot of driving between fields. Another area where the Condor excels in efficiency, he says.
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