Up to 100 tons per shift: grapes are being harvested in the Mykolaiv region, but there are half as many workers

The grape harvest has come in, people "are running out": machinery is saving a farm in the Mykolaiv region

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11 Sep 2026

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In the settlement of Radisnyi Sad of the Mykolaiv district, the grape harvest season is underway. The local enterprise has planted technical varieties on more than 700 hectares, and during peak harvesting they can receive up to 100 tonnes of grapes per shift. However, the harvest has to be gathered amid an acute labor shortage: whereas in 2023 more than 200 people were involved in seasonal work, in 2026 there are not even 100 workers on the harvest.

About how the 2026 grape season is going in the 2026 Mykolaiv region, reporters from Suspilne told by the company’s general director Yevhen Korniyenko, the viticulture agronomist Serhii Stoiev and seasonal worker Liubov Hryshchuk.

The grape harvest at the farm traditionally starts in August and lasts about two months. The plantations are primarily technical varieties, that is, grapes destined for processing. One of the main problems this season, the company’s general director Yevhen Korniyenko says, is the lack of manpower. Over the past three years, the number of people coming out to harvest grapes has more than halved.

“If even in 2023 we had over 200 people, now there aren’t even 100 people harvesting grapes. And the situation is getting worse every year,” — says the company’s general director Yevhen Korniyenko.

Due to the shortage of workers, the company is forced to recruit people not only from Radisnyi Sad but also from other communities, villages and towns. Seasonal workers are offered accommodation directly at the farm until the end of the harvest. According to Yevhen Korniyenko, the enterprise covers accommodation and meals for seasonal workers so that people can work throughout the harvesting period.

“They are accommodated with us free of charge. Their accommodation is free, meals are provided three times a day. They arrive at the start — and stay until the last day of harvesting,” — says Yevhen Korniyenko.

Some vineyards are harvested mechanically due to the lack of workers. A specialized harvester moves along the vineyard rows, separates the berries and accumulates them in bins. At the same time, the machine can carry about 3 tonnes of grapes. Viticulture agronomist Serhii Stoiev said that in one working day the harvester can cover about 9–11 hectares, depending on the conditions in a specific field. Thus, mechanized harvesting partially compensates for the shortage of seasonal workers. In one day a single harvester can collect about 70–80 tonnes, while on other plots the harvest continues to be cut by hand.

Some of the grapes at the farm are still harvested manually. Among the seasonal workers is Liubov Hryshchuk, who has been coming to the vineyards from Novyi Buh for 22 consecutive years. Now Liubov Hryshchuk leads a crew. In one shift her workers can manually collect about 3–4 tonnes of grapes. After cutting, the berries are taken by a loader, then transferred into a tractor and a truck. Liubov Hryshchuk described the entire workflow of the crew — from cutting the clusters to counting the harvested tonnage at the end of the day.

“We cut the grapes, then our loader takes them. He dumps them into the tractor. The tractor loads into the truck when it’s full. And then in the evening they give us the tonnage of how much we harvested that day,” — says Liubov.

After harvesting, grapes are not stored in the fields for long. The crop is loaded onto transport and delivered to the plant, where it is processed into wine base.

This raw material is then used to produce sparkling wine, dry and table wines.

The enterprise in Radisnyi Sad has a long history of viticulture. As of the end of 2022, JSC “Radsad” reported 760 hectares of vineyards of technical varieties. That year, despite Russian shelling and damage to production, the company managed to harvest about 7,700 tonnes of grapes and produce 4,360,000 litres of wine materials.

At that time the enterprise employed more than 200 people. The current situation shows how sharply the staffing situation has changed over the years of full-scale war: now even for seasonal grape harvests workers have to be brought from other settlements and the reliance on machinery is increasing.

An additional challenge for Mykolaiv region farmers this summer was the weather. In August 2026 the region experienced a prolonged drought, and productive moisture reserves in the arable layer of the soil were in some places completely depleted. At the same time, in the spring agrometeorologists reported that they had not detected damage to grapes from weather anomalies.

So in 2026 grapes in Radisnyi Sad did produce a crop, but now the key problem for the farm is not only the weather or the war, but who will harvest that crop. Part of the work is already effectively taken over by machinery, which can replace a significant amount of manual labor in a day.