It will take Ukraine 2-3 years to restore its agriculture industry and get back to pre-war export levels
According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Russia is deliberately targeting Ukraine’s farmland, placing landmines in fields, and destroying equipment and storage facilities. Those claims were supported by European Union Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski, who said the bloc would seek to aid Ukraine’s farmers.
Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin echoed the warnings: “There’s a clear objective to create a food crisis on top of the energy crisis, as well as waging an immoral and unjust war on Ukraine itself.”
Ukraine is the world’s largest producer of sunflower oil and ranks among the top six exporters of wheat, corn, chicken, and even honey. The war has already destroyed some of the progress Ukraine has made in decades of scaling up its agriculture industry. Its wheat harvest in 2021 was the biggest since the collapse of the Soviet Union three decades earlier. Eventually, farmers will have to rebuild and rid their land of shells and chemical pollution.
The OSCE warned of the “potentially disastrous” environmental impact, including causing poor drinking water, chemical leaks, and flooding.
“You have to restore supply networks, you have to get back people and you have to get back necessary capital, to restore production,” said Oleh Nivievskyi, assistant professor at the Kyiv School of Economics. “To get back to the previous export levels I would say that it will take two to three years.”
