Ukraine plays a major role in the global agriculture sector today, as it is one of the largest grain and seed oil producers in the world and is known as the "Breadbasket of Europe". Ukraine's land is mostly flat. Its soils are rich, and its climate is ideal for farming. Although prosperous in agriculture in recent years, this has not always been the case. Ukraine was under the communist control of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) from 1921-1991. After Vladimir Lenin died in 1924, Joseph Stalin rose to power a few years later and enforced collective farming as part of his first Five Year Plan. Collective farming was an agricultural policy that forced peasant farmers to give up their private plots of land to join collective farms, and it was implemented while also industrializing Russian farming. The most prominent example of collective farming was the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-33 where almost 4 million people starved to death. In the 1970s, Stalin decided to expand the livestock sector in an effort to compete with Western countries; as a result, grains were mostly imported during that time.
Ukraine gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991; the disbanded countries became known as the Commonwealth of Independent States. The agricultural and economic transformation following the collapse was not easy; in Ukraine, there was initially a significant drop in the production of wheat and other grains. Agriculture moved slowly away from government-controlled to privatized farming in the late 1990s. In the 2000s, the KRU (Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine) emerged as the largest region of grain exports for the European Union and the Middle East, in addition to surrounding countries. In 2021, Russia and Ukraine exported 28% of wheat around the globe. As a result of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the global food crisis has gotten much worse, increasing prices of commodities. Grain exports from Ukraine and Russia have declined significantly as a result of Russia's invasion. This guide will look at how a number of different factors including commodities, fertilizer, and soil, are impacted by the current Ukraine conflict.
IFPRI's mission to reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries is directly linked to the food crisis caused by the current Russia-Ukraine conflict. Thus, IFPRI's research is now more essential than ever in creating a world with less food insecurity.
Sources: https://www.britannica.com and www.ers.usda.gov
