Without irrigation, Ukraine could lose half of its agricultural production
Ukraine risks losing 50% of its agricultural output due to insufficient irrigation, warns the All-Ukrainian Agrarian Council. With major crop losses reported in Mykolaiv and Kherson, farmers are adopting moisture-saving techniques. However, experts stress the urgent need for a national water strategy to manage seasonal distribution amid worsening climate change.
The All-Ukrainian Agrarian Council (VAR) has warned that without effective irrigation, Ukraine could lose half of its agricultural production.
“We are already seeing the consequences in Bessarabia, in the Mykolaiv region, this year in the Kherson region, about 400,000 hectares of crops have died, another one and a half million hectares have been damaged,” said the deputy head of the VAR, Mykhailo Sokolov.
He said that the situation is forcing farmers to switch to soil cultivation technologies that save moisture: strip-till (when narrow strips are cultivated for crops, and the rows are left untouched), no-till (direct sowing without mechanical soil cultivation).
But this is not enough, the VAR believes, and Ukraine needs a national water supply strategy.
“Due to climate change, we may lose half of our agricultural production. To prevent this from happening, we need a state policy – to restore irrigation, accumulate water and distribute it by season. Because the issue is not only in the volume of water, but in how it is distributed throughout the year. A situation where there is too much water at the beginning of the year, and then there is a drought, also makes agriculture impossible,” said Sokolov.
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Source : Ukr Agro Consult
