Billions needed to restore Ukraine's farmland

Damage to the landscape has been analysed, using high-resolution satellite imagery, at Wageningen University & Research (WUR) in the Netherlands, which has been ranked No 1 in Agriculture and Forestry for 10 years in a row by the QS World University Rankings.

"War has different kinds of impact on soils", said WUR researcher Serhii Sydorenko, who is from Ukraine himself. "The impact can be mechanical, like soil compression by heavy military equipment, or the formation of trenches and craters. It can also be chemical, such as the contamination of soil with heavy metals and rocket fuel."

Soil compression and compaction is already a serious problem in agriculture, caused by tractors and other heavy machinery. "Military vehicles like tanks are much heavier and therefore more damaging", said Giulia Bongiorno, lecturer in soil biology at WUR. "As they press the soil layers together, there will be less space for water and oxygen. These conditions will result in a habitat that is detrimental for organisms that live in the ground, like soil fauna and plant roots".

"The mixing of different soil layers due to explosions is probably even worse", said Sydorenko. "The upper half-meter is the richest part. Explosions cause all the layers to violently blend together, destroying soil life. This makes the soil much less fertile".

The effects depend on the type of weapon used. "Some aerial bombs and missiles leave craters with a depth of six meters. These craters also completely change the topography of the landscape. Craters will make it very difficult for farmers to manage their lands".

Soil contamination

In soil science, the cratering and mixing of the soil by explosive munitions was first studied after World War I. Explosive munitions such as missiles and artillery shells contaminate the soil with chemicals and heavy metals. Recent surveys in Ukraine have shown sharply increased levels of soil pollution with metals like cadmium, copper and zinc, as well as fuel products.

An often overlooked effect of the war is the destruction of windbreaks. These long rows of trees and shrubs border almost every field in Ukraine. "Windbreaks play a vital role in agricultural landscapes’, said Sydorenko. "They provide shelter from the wind, preventing soil erosion, and preserving soil moisture. But many of them have been damaged, destroyed, and used as fortifications or camouflage. Their destruction has many cascading effects, like soil degradation and a higher risk of desertification".

It may take many years after the war for Ukraine to restore its agricultural lands. Some problems may be too severe to be solved in the near future. Giulia Bongiorno said, "We don’t know the exact impact of heavy metals on food quality. At a high concentration, they can cause problems for plant growth and the quality of the food. In any case, detecting heavy metals is not routinely done. It requires expensive equipment".

"In Ukraine, we understand that some areas can’t just be returned to agriculture", said Sydorenko. "There are fields that can’t be de-mined easily, and many fields will contain unexploded ammunition deep in the ground. So we are even discussing the possibility of turning some lands into protected areas".

To this day, farmers in Flanders, Belgium, still encounter unexploded bombs from World War I (1914-18) while ploughing their fields.

Chernozem

Many of Ukraine's most fertile soils overlap with the frontline of the conflict, in eastern and southern Ukraine, and have been hit very hard. Most are heavily damaged, contaminated, or occupied by Russia.

These are the areas of the chernozem, which can be translated as “black earth”. Under the right climate conditions, chernozem is formed in steppe areas with high grass, which are prevalent in eastern and southern Ukraine, as well as other parts of Europe and Asia.

"That dark colour indicates a high presence of organic matter", said Giulia Bongiorno. "Decomposed plant material, micro-organisms and other forms of organic matter are very important for soil fertility. They provide many functions, retaining and releasing nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium, holding water, improving the structure of the soil, and more."

All those functions supported the rich grain harvests Ukraine was famous for.

Together with colleagues from Ukrainian and Dutch universities, Wilfred Dolfsma, professor of Business Management and Organisation at WUR, estimated the cost of restoring Kharkiv’s agricultural soil after the war, using methods previously applied in conflict zones like Syria and Darfur., and calculating the cost of surveying and de-mining the soil, filling craters, and other necessary steps. The total came to at least €2 billion.

But Kharkiv is only one of ten Ukrainian regions that have been severely affected by the war. Dolfsma and his colleagues assumed that the cost for the other nine regions will be similar, since the damage in Kharkiv is estimated to fall between the most affected regions (such as Donetsk and Kherson) and those that are less affected.

Following these assumptions, the researchers arrived at a total cost of about €20bn for restoration of Ukraine’s agricultural soil. This amount is equivalent to about 15% of the country's GDP before the war.

The true cost will likely be even higher, said Dolfsma. "This estimate doesn’t include costs for machinery, fuel or labour. Estimating those factors is too speculative. The cost of removing contaminated soil, for example, depends on things like the accessibility of the fields, and rainfall interrupting the work."

The recovery will require significant investment and coordination. Dolfsma said, "20 billion is our first estimate. And of course, it’s not just about money, there will be a high demand for machinery and people, who will have to be trained. And all the while, Ukrainians also have to rebuild houses, infrastructure, and so on. So policymakers need to understand that it will take a lot of time and investment for the grain to start flowing again."