A farmer uses an agricultural machine on a wheat farm in Odessa, Ukraine, on June 17. (Metin Aktas / Anadolu Agency / Getty Images)
According to officials and independent estimates, Ukrainian farmers have planted about 25% less land than was cultivated in 2021.
According to Markiyan Dmitrasevich, Deputy Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine, a total of 13.5 million hectares have been sown with various crops – 80% of the area sown last year.
“Obviously we could not sow in Luhansk, Donetsk districts, partly in Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy regions,” Dmitrasevich said.
In addition, the rich agricultural land in southern Ukraine is already under Russian control. This area also produces most of the vegetables in Ukraine.
Another senior official in the Ministry of Agrarian Policy, Taras Vysotsky, said more spring wheat was sown last year, but there has been a sharp decline in corn and sunflower sowing.
As for the expected harvest, Vysotsky said that “there may be about 48-50 million tons of grain. This is less than in previous years, when it reached 85 million.” Dmitrasevich made a similar prediction, saying: “We hope to harvest approximately 60 million tonnes of cereals and oilseeds – just over half of what we collected last year.”
Separately, Maxar Technologies studied satellite imagery of agricultural land in Ukraine and concluded that Ukrainian farmers planted 30% less spring in 2022.
Maxar predicts that in 2022 the production of corn will decrease by 54% and the production of sunflower – by 40% compared to the growing season in 2021.
The conflict has destroyed dozens of grain storage facilities in ports and rural areas, with about 10 million tonnes already under Russian control, while others have been destroyed in missile and artillery attacks. In May, numerous sources also told CNN that Russian forces were stealing agricultural equipment and thousands of tons of grain from Ukrainian farmers in areas they had occupied.
Some Ukrainian officials say storage difficulties have forced farmers to change crops. Marchuk further warned that fuel shortages could hamper the harvest. And he said farmers are facing a financial crisis, with interest rates rising by up to 35%.
“A compromise must be reached to reduce the interest rate. In conditions where there are no exports, when there is no working capital, it is very difficult to repay a loan with a very high interest rate, unlike the interest rates that existed before.”
The export of cereals and oilseeds was complicated by the blockade of Odessa and other Black Sea ports.
Dmitrasevich said that after the Russian invasion, Ukraine exported 4 million tons of cereals and oilseeds, compared to a pre-war forecast of between 5 and 6 million tons. Various options for road and rail transport have been developed, with the grain traveling by rail to the Romanian port of Constanta and across the land border with Poland. But the alternatives are more cumbersome than delivering to world markets across the Black Sea.
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