Ukrainian farmers have sown about 25% less land than cultivated in 2021, according to officials and independent estimates. According to Markiyan Dmytrasevych, Ukraine’s deputy minister for agricultural policy and food, a total of 13.5 million hectares had been sown with a variety of crops – 80% of the land sown last year. “Obviously we could not sow in the Luhansk, Donetsk regions, partly in the Kiev, Chernihiv and Sumy regions,” Dmitrasevich said. In addition, rich agricultural land in southern Ukraine is now under Russian control. This region also produced much of Ukraine’s vegetables. Another senior Agriculture Ministry official, Taras Vysotskyi, said more spring wheat had been sown this year than last year, but there had been a sharp drop in corn and sunflower sowing. As for the expected harvest, Vysotskyi said that “there may be about 48-50 million tons of grain. It is smaller than in previous years, when it reached 85 million.” Dmytrasevych made a similar prediction, saying “We hope to harvest about 60 million tonnes of grain and oilseeds – a little more than half of what we harvested last year.” Separately, Maxar Technologies looked at satellite imagery of agricultural areas in Ukraine and concluded that Ukrainian farmers planted 30% less spring area in 2022. Maxar predicted that corn production in 2022 would be reduced by 54% and sunflower production by 40% compared to the 2021 growing season. The conflict has destroyed dozens of grain storage facilities in ports and rural areas, with about 10 million tonnes now under Russian control, while others have been destroyed in rocket and artillery attacks. In May, several 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 led farmers to change crops. Marchuk further warned that fuel shortages could hamper the harvest. And he said farmers were facing an economic crisis, with interest rates on loans rising by up to 35%. “A compromise must be made to reduce the interest rate. “In conditions where there are no exports, when there is no working capital, it is very difficult to repay the loan with very high interest rates, in contrast to the interest rates that existed before.” The export of cereals and oilseeds is complicated by the blockade of Odessa and other ports on the Black Sea. Dmytrasevych said that since the Russian invasion, Ukraine had exported 4 million tons of grain and oilseeds, compared to a pre-war forecast of between 5 and 6 million tons. Various options have been developed for road and rail transport, with cereals traveling by rail to the Romanian port of Constanta and across the land border to Poland. But alternatives are more rigid than shipping to world markets via the Black Sea.
