Cherkasy oblast. Credit: Nils Ackerman, Lundi13/NECU, 2016.The trip south from Kyiv to the villages of Cherkasy oblast takes several hours by bus over often bumpy roads, but I don’t mind — the idyllic countryside and expansive views of chernozem, the black soil that Ukraine is famous for, provides some respite from the concrete and hustle of the capital. Indeed, the country’s 30 million hectares of fertile and high-yielding soil is the reason why Ukraine is known as “the breadbasket of Europe”, and right now agriculture is booming.
The Maidan protests of 2014 ushered in an era of government reforms that have been a boon to agriculture, marked by a free trade agreement with the EU and a loan of $17 billion from the International Monetary Fund to support further reforms. The agricultural sector’s resilience is evidenced by the fact that, while most of the economy reeled after the Russian invasion of the Donbas region, this was the only sector to record growth in 2014. The World Bank has suggested that Ukraine offers a “big chance” to push for further deregulation and open up the country’s land resources to the agribusiness industry.
At present, a dozen or so large agribusiness holdings own a fifth of the country’s most fertile land. While a moratorium on land sales is in place to prevent further consolidation of agricultural ownership, pressure from corporations and international investors is likely to mean that the ban will be lifted.
