Port Blockade Could Force Farmers to Reduce Land Cultivation: 7 Million Hectares at Risk

This opinion was expressed by Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food Taras Vysotskyi in an interview with RBC-Ukraine.

«If the ports remain blocked for more than six months, it will be less about reducing areas and more about less productive use of land — across up to 7 million hectares. That is one third of all sown areas in Ukraine,» he noted.

He added that simply abandoning the land would be too costly: it still needs to be maintained to prevent it from becoming overgrown with weeds, which would be even more expensive to eliminate later.

«So, most likely, intensive cultivation will be abandoned on these areas in favour of technologies with minimal costs. For example, green manure crops may be sown — crops that are later ploughed into the soil as fertiliser. The land will remain maintained, but it will not produce a harvest. If the situation does not change, agricultural companies may switch to this practice as early as next spring,» the minister predicts.