Oats, rapeseed, soybeans – the area under cultivation in Ukraine has in some cases fallen sharply. The United Nations warn of a food disaster.
The consequences of the Ukraine war for global food security are becoming increasingly visible.
The United Nations is already warning of a global food catastrophe because around 30 percent of Ukraine’s agricultural land cannot be cultivated. The US Department of Agriculture is assuming war-related crop losses of around one-third for wheat.
According to figures from the Ukraine itself (as of May 12), the cultivated areas fell by more than 40 percent. The decline in cultivation is not so dramatic for all crops, although there are also uncertainties with regard to the figures for the areas occupied by Russia.
In the case of winter cereals, the sown areas at 7.6 million hectares are only 300,000 hectares below those of the previous year. In the case of spring wheat, only two and a half percent less area was sown than in the previous year at 187,500 hectares.
The decline is therefore stronger at 32 percent for spring barley. A drastic decline can be seen in maize in particular. Compared to 2021, the area under cultivation has shrunk by 40 percent to 3.2 million hectares.
And according to the available data, only half of the previous year’s amount of sunflowers was applied. Only 3.3 million hectares were planted with sunflowers. So far, Ukraine has been the world market leader in the export of sunflower oil.
A drop of twelve percent was registered for oats. About 20 percent less rapeseed has been cultivated. In the case of soybeans, which are important for animal feed, the decline is 43 percent. The slump in the cultivation of buckwheat is also drastic. According to Ukrainian data, the once traditional grain was only sown on 12,200 hectares – a drop of 85 percent. The decline is also strong at 21 percent for potatoes. They are still grown on a million hectares.
In its statement, the Ukrainian Ministry of Agriculture has taken out the entire embattled eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk. The ministry did not provide any information on the data situation for the partly occupied, partly contested eastern and southern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Cherson. Cherson is traditionally a center for fruit and vegetable cultivation. Sweet cherries from Melitopol and melons will hardly find their way to unoccupied Ukraine.
Southern Ukrainian farmers are already complaining about the lack of sales for their new potatoes, and in parts of the country that are not fought over or occupied, the prices for the vegetables, which otherwise come from southern Ukraine, are skyrocketing.
