Do you know which country is called the Bread Basket of Europe? With the nation’s fertile black soil, chernozem, fit for agriculture due to its high moisture retention capacity, Ukraine boasts of the ability to produce food for more than 500 million people!
Almost 75% of the country’s soil is used for agriculture. Cultivating 32 million hectares of agricultural land each year, it provides a large chunk of wheat and sunflower product supply to the world. Ukraine globally supplies grains like corn, barley, and wheat; it was expected to supply 50% of the world’s sunflower oil in the year 2021-22.
An important subsector in Ukrainian crop farming is oilseed with sunflower, soy and rapeseed being the major crops. The implementation of export tariffs for unprocessed sunflower seed in the 2020s, put Ukraine’s sunflower oil industry on the fast track and today it is the number one exporter of sunflower oil in the world.
On top of these, the country also exports a substantial amount of milk, vegetables and sugar beets. The produce from Ukraine is a necessity for manufacturing some pantry staples like bread and pasta, making it an crucial for the global food market. If Ukraine is hit by political instability or natural calamity, the food supply chain would be hit hard with food shortage and price hikes.
Organic thrust
One of the top three organic products exporters of the European Union, Ukraine has more than 400,000 hectares of organic-certified agricultural land. It is a world leader in organic farming, ranking 20th on a global scale. Most of its organic produce consists of oilseeds, legumes, and cereals. The domestic Ukrainian domestic market is striving to be sufficient by establishing processing units for organic raw materials like honey, oil, teas, flour and more. Ukraine has 722 organic operators as of 2020 and 467 980 ha of land in organic farming and those in transition which is growing.
Ukrainian organic farms are mostly located in Odesa, Kherson, Kiev, Poltava, Vinnytsia, Transcarpathian, Lviv, Ternopil and the Zhytomyr regions. Ukrainian certified organic farms, vary in size, as in most European countries, to several thousand hectares of arable land.
In 2019, 3.24 million tons of organic agri-food products were imported into the EU, more than 10% of which is coming from Ukraine. Ukrainian exports to the EU increased by 27% – from 265,817 tons in 2018 to 337,856 tons in 2019. Grains (except rice and wheat, 76.9% of grains of Ukrainian origin), wheat (31.8% from Ukraine), oilseeds (except soybeans, 18.2% and second only to Turkey) are mainly exported to the EU from Ukraine, soybeans (4th place and 13% of soybean imports from Ukraine), fruits (11% and 3rd place). Ukraine is also one of the largest exporters of cake, fruit juices and vegetables, which are key export products.
The exports of Ukrainian organic food products are mainly to the Netherlands, the US, Germany, Lithuania, Austria, the United Kingdom, Poland, Canada, Italy and Switzerland.
Reforming agri sector
Ukraine took a step ahead to develop the agri-sector by introducing Agricultural Land Reforms a few months ago.
In 2021, Ukrainian Government adopted the National Economic Strategy until 2030 which officially set a target for increase in organic agricultural land in Ukraine. It is planned that by 2030 Ukrainian organic land will reach 3% of the total area of agricultural lands of Ukraine (or near 1.3 million hectares).
The land reform law, effective since July 1, 2021, has opened the land market in such a way that systems for nearly 150,000 hectares of land can be modernised and farmers can now adopt better technologies for increased profits, in turn leading to more disposable income for the farmer. With its contribution to the global economy in the recent years, Ukraine has attracted a lot of investments in its agricultural sector.
Another goal of the Strategy is to increase exports of organic products to 1 billion US$ by 2030. Ukrainian organic operators are often certified according to the US National Organic Program (NOP) and/or Canada Organic Regime (COR), Bio Suisse (Switzerland), Naturland and Bioland (Germany), JAS (Japan), and KRAV (Sweden).
Did you know?
- That Ukraine has the most fertile soil in Europe:n33% of the world’s black soil is in Ukraine. Ukrainian agriculture land is 1.16 the territory of Germany
- Ukrainian exporters are trusted partners for already about 230 importing companies from Europe, North America and Asia;
- Being a EU neighbour, it means easy and fast logistics. There are direct flights to all European capitals within 2-3 hours.
- 18 free trade agreements including with the EU, EFTA, UK, Canada and Israel;
- Tasty products of superb quality confirmed by the EU and other organic standards.
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