Meet Our In-House Agronomist, Eugene Kovalenko

While Verdi is known as an affordable, automated irrigation solution provider, much of what the team is passionate about is ensuring healthy, arable lands and giving farmers a greater understanding of solutions that ensure sustainable farming for the future. Who better to deliver this kind of information to the fields than an agronomist? 

Meet our in-house agronomist, Eugene Kovalenko. He’s also Verdi’s Account Manager for the Pacific Northwest region. With a focus on soil health and soil chemistry, he brings a lot of knowledge to Verdi’s customers. 

Eugene’s master’s in Plant Science was earned at UBC’s Wine Institute where he focused on the practical aspects of viticulture and found an ongoing interest he couldn’t let go of. 

“I was dealing with real commercial plants at the Institute,” he says. “Things like timing of deficit irrigation in Gewurztraminer, adjusting crop load and when you would apply adjustments to a crop load. 

“I looked at how the volatile compounds in the grapes would change based on the adjustments. How this would affect everything, including the basic characteristics of the resulting wine.

“I was really interested in what was happening in the grapes and tried to get a holistic understanding of what was happening in them.”

‍

Growing on the Vineyard

One of his first small jobs, while finishing up his master’s degree, was berry sampling with Andrew Peller Ltd. Then as he struck out into the industry, he took on a vineyard assistant position with Maverick Estate Winery in Oliver, BC. This later translated into his becoming the vineyard manager and finding his stride in everything grapes. 

“I got a lot of experience at Maverick because we were a very small team. I was able to wear every possible hat in a vineyard: scouting, irrigation management, fixing the tractor, pruning, planting, logistics… everything. I feel super fortunate because that’s not an experience I could have easily gotten anywhere else,” Eugene says. 

‍

Grain to Grapes

These were not the roles he would have anticipated thriving in when he fell in love with the idea of being a grain farmer after doing a project on Saskatchewan in elementary school. But, farming always beckoned to him. Even as a toddler! His family immigrated to Canada from Ukraine when he was three, but prior to that, he’d already had exposure to his future field. 

‍

“From very early on, I’ve always had an interest in the outdoors,” he says. “Maybe it was spending the second year of my life at my grandparents’ cottage outside of Kiev.”

‍

The Technical Side of Farming

Now, bringing all of his experiences and education together, he helps Verdi’s customers explore the “mystical world of regenerative agriculture and the technical world of chemistry in the soil.”

Not only does Eugene bring the skills to help manage customer relationships, but he also brings the technical knowledge to explore agronomy issues with Verdi customers to improve the results they see in the field. He also looks forward to learning from those same customers as they look at needs and how new tools can play a part. 

“There’s still so much to learn. I’m always expanding my knowledge,” he says. “I can talk shop with growers to give them advice or to just ask them about what they’re doing and get to know what solutions they are using or are considering.”

Having worked at a smaller vineyard (20 to 30 acres), he enjoys exploring the practices of the larger, 1,000-plus acre operations to expand his knowledge. He’s able to speak about the practicalities of farming tools like tractors and tillers as well as soil amendments.

“I just love farming,” Eugene says. “So, any opportunity to geek out about that is something that I’m going to enjoy.”

‍

Get a Viticulturist on Your Farm‍

In his role with Verdi, he is gaining more experience in the sales and marketing areas while also talking to the product engineers and learning about new innovations and how the existing solutions apply to various customer needs. He’s also finding more opportunities to make use of his technical skills. 

The constant improvement at Verdi excites him. It’s likely because he is able to imagine how the continuous innovation will be applied out in the vineyard, orchard or farm space and can share that advancement with potential and existing customers. 

And, those customers may be anywhere in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, BC or Alberta. He will even be travelling to other regions to learn about how existing customers are making use of the systems and supports they have invested in. 

“We have a diverse existing clientele already,” he says. “Not only do we have vineyard operators in our client profile, we also have orchards in the Pacific Northwest. We have a few outdoor cannabis operations as well and a number of growers in California too.”

He sees opportunities to help cherry growers and to expand on the customer reach Verdi has in the berry growing space.

“Apples, cherries, peaches, berries, grapes; if it needs irrigation of any kind, we can do something with it,” he says. “It doesn’t even have to be just irrigation focused.”

This line of thought led him to mention the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NVDI), which quantifies vegetation density and the light humans can’t see which is reflected (near-infrared) or absorbed (red light) by plants. 

“It gives a rough idea of how the plant is doing,” Eugene explains. “They’ll give off a different ratio when they aren’t as healthy. An experienced farmer can go out and look at plants and see what’s healthy or not. It can really help to dial in plan health.”

He says that Verdi uses satellite imagery to determine NVDI to help farmers on large acreages determine their plant health when they simply don’t have the time to walk the entire growing area. 

“We’re not just here to provide irrigation and remote sensing solutions,” he says. “We’re here to provide a customer experience solution. Our customer support has always been on the next level. In a way, that’s one of the services we provide alongside the hardware and software.”

He wants to help farmers become more efficient and make use of all of the tools they have available. From understanding the chemical composition of the soil and the moisture requirements, to breaking a growing region down into blocks and assessing plant health, Eugene is ready to talk about farming and solve the challenges that come with it.  

‍