More than 5 million hectares of agricultural land are unusable due to the war

As a result of the hostilities, more than 5 million hectares of agricultural land are still unusable due to mining, contamination with explosive remnants, or ongoing hostilities.

This was stated by Oleksandr Haydu, Chairman of the Committee on Agrarian and Land Policy, citing data from the oblast military administrations.

"Due to mining or the presence of dangerous objects in agricultural land, it is impossible to sow them. For example, only 4.5 million hectares were sown with winter crops. In contrast, last year 7.7 million hectares were sown with these crops. This has a direct impact on the country's food security. That is why today our priority task is to create conditions for the demining of land of small and medium-sized agrarians who do not have the possibility to do it on their own," Mr. Haydu emphasised.

According to him, Ukraine is engaging international organisations to speed up demining. In particular, representatives of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) plan to allocate about $50 million in 2023 for the purchase of mechanised demining equipment and training of operators of such equipment. They will be used to clean up Ukrainian territories contaminated by explosive ordnance.

Previously. More than 1 million hectares of agricultural land have been mined in Kharkiv and Kherson oblasts.