Thousands of hectares of farmland will be left deserted as a result of the collapse of the Kakhovka dam. The consequences could also be felt globally in the long term.” Anyway, I can’t farm my land since it was confiscated by the occupying forces. But now there will be no more water,” Ukrainian farmer Wasyl R. tells DW. “Last February, the Russians came and announced that the fields and all the properties on my farm would be ‘nationalized’.”
For security reasons, the farmer had to leave the Russian-occupied areas last year, so he doesn’t want his real name to appear in the media – that could endanger his parents, who still live there.
His situation is similar to that of many farmers in the Kherson region of southern Ukraine, which has been largely occupied by Russia since the first half of 2022, as well as the neighboring region of Zaporizhia. Many residents fled the invaders, moving to other Ukrainian regions.
Without water there is no cultivation
Just a few months after the expropriation, the destruction of the Kakhovka dam was the next shock for Wasyl R. Since the night of June 6, his farm’s 3,000 cultivated hectares have been cut off from irrigation and are in danger of becoming desert. It’s bad news for him and for the countless farmers in southern Ukraine.
According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Agriculture, almost 600,000 hectares were affected in the arid south of Ukraine, land that, without water from the dam that was destroyed, can no longer be cultivated. Before the war, up to four million tons of grains and oilseeds worth 1.5 billion dollars were harvested here.
In addition to the regions of Kherson and Zaporizia, farmers in Crimea, annexed by Russia, are also losing all prospects with the destruction of the Kakhovka dam. Because the Northern Crimean Canal, which is also fed by the huge reservoir of water from the Dnipro dam, will soon run dry, according to experts.
Destruction of the dam mainly affects occupied areas
As far as the Ukrainian economy as a whole is concerned, the threat of desertification in these areas is likely to have only very limited consequences for the time being. Most of the affected farms are located in Russian-occupied territory. Its production has not reached the Ukrainian market since 2022, which provoked significant increases in prices for agricultural products already at that time. And vegetable imports increased by 66%.
Before the war, Kherson produced 12% of the country’s total vegetables on just over 2% of agricultural land. Since the beginning of the war, Ukraine has lost 36% of the entire tomato crop. “Tomatoes from southern Ukraine are the best, with a particularly sweet taste. With sufficient irrigation, they ripen particularly well in the southern sun,” says Yuriy Lupenko of the Kiev Institute of Agricultural Economics. Now, without water from the Kakhovka reservoir, farmers in southern Ukraine would lose their livelihoods. Lupenko warns that there could be a permanent shortage of vegetables.
Impact on the fight against hunger
“The destruction of the dam has no direct consequences for Ukrainian grain exports because the affected areas have been cut off from international markets since 2022. However, any bad news from Ukraine leads to price fluctuations,” warns Stephan von Cramon-Taubadel, professor in agricultural economics at the Georg-August University in Göttingen, Germany. “Tension results from the sum of many uncertainties. Prices can fluctuate very quickly with the arrival of new news.”
Immediately after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, grain prices in international trading centers rose by an average of 3%. The agricultural economist from Göttingen emphasizes that nervousness will continue as long as Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine lasts. Good harvests in major agricultural countries, including Russia, and positive forecasts for 2023 have brought relatively low prices for importers, including many poorer countries in the Global South. “But in the long term, the world cannot do without a large part of Ukrainian agricultural production in the fight against hunger,” emphasizes the expert.
“If this region is increasingly affected in the medium term by war damage like the dam failure, then it’s as if we have to go to war against world hunger with one arm tied behind our back,” says Stephan von Cramon-Taubadel. He recalls how Russia repeatedly questions the extension of the grain deal and therefore Ukraine’s exports, which always causes new jitters in the market.
Hope for a fresh start still exists
Wasyl R., the farmer from the Kherson region, currently lives in western Ukraine. Even if his homeland threatens to dry up without irrigation from the Dnipro, he pins all his hopes on the Ukrainian army’s counter-offensive. “We will come back and rebuild our farm. It will be difficult because we will have to dig deep to find water. And that will take us at least three to five years.” Still, Wasyl doesn’t think about giving up.
In fact, the prospects for farmers in southern Ukraine are not encouraging. Many had to stop production completely because of the war or lack of sales opportunities. Logistics will also suffer from the destruction of the dam. This is because the last section of the Dnipro River before flowing into the Black Sea will no longer be passable for shipping.
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