A tailpart of a missile sticks out of the ground in the village of Chornobaivka, near Kherson
KYIV — After the start of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, most of the world's consumers of agricultural products such as wheat, sunflower oil and corn suddenly learned that most of these products were grown in Ukraine. They also discovered that this is a country whose fertile lands feed a significant part of Africa and Europe.
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Sign up to our free daily newsletter.Without its wheat and sunflowers, many all over the world will starve to death. So, the war in Ukraine has become a world war. And even when the hostilities end, Ukraine will not be able to immediately resume feeding the world, as Russian troops are destroying the basis of its agriculture — chernozem soil.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, during the war in Ukraine, significantly degraded agricultural land increased by 13%. A significant percentage of the land is at risk of degradation. Scientists call it ecocide – the deliberate destruction of Ukraine's ecosystem. More than 200,000 hectares of territories in the combat zone are contaminated with mines, shells, and debris.
And the soil is full of heavy metals, which will pose a threat to health for years.
A long recovery process
Scientists note that the issue of restoring land fertility after Russia's aggression is already something that should be a priority. The areas of agricultural land filled with mines and ammunition or contaminated with oil products and chemical compounds are increasing every day. And this is primarily in the regions with the most fertile soils in Ukraine.
“We see that soils with the best agrochemical characteristics and a fairly high ecological and agrochemical score are negatively affected,” says Svitlana Romanova, deputy general director for scientific activities of the Soil Protection Institute of Ukraine.
The destruction of the upper nutrient-rich layer due to the toxic effects of explosive devices, ammunition and military equipment ultimately leads to a loss of soil fertility and makes the fields unsuitable for agricultural production. As history shows, the recovery will take more than a year. Because, for example, according to Belgian scientists, even 90 years after the First World War, the concentrations of heavy metals exceeded maximum permissible limits at the sites of former battles.
Russian missiles destroyed warehouses with grain in the Zaporizhzhia Region
The demining process
Dmytro Slivchenko, chairman of the Beryslav District Council in the Kherson Oblast in southern Ukraine, said in an interview in November: “Our region is agricultural. 90% of the profits of our communities came from land, land rent, farmers' taxes. And now these fields, even if not mined, are scattered with unexploded shells, and we are talking about very large areas.”
However, the demining process should only be started after checking power lines, office buildings and yards.
What’s more, the longer the territories are under occupation, the higher the level of their mining. In particular, according to the Ministry of Emergency Situations, one of the highest levels was recorded in the liberated territories of the Kherson region.
Metals in the soil
But the soils suffer not only from mines and ammunition. As a result of the war, another huge problem is the contamination of arable land with compounds of heavy metals.
“At the end of April, the Armed Forces managed to drive the aggressor out of Kharkiv, where our institute is located, and we collected primary data on the outskirts of Kharkiv, where the fiercest fighting took place,” says Maksym Solokha from the National Scientific Center Institute for Soil Science and Agrochemistry Research.
It will take decades to clean up Ukraine's fertile lands after the war
On the basis of instrumental studies, scientists have concluded that the level of lead and cadmium in the soil exceeds acceptable norms. They are present in craters, primarily artillery, at a depth of about two meters.
“They are considered heavy metals. They will not go anywhere... And then they lead to cancer. We know that there are other metals besides these large accumulations of cadmium and lead,” he says.
The most dangerous are places where heavy equipment was burnt. “According to our estimates, the area where heavy armored vehicles exploded is the most polluted, the most toxic. And this area needs to be fixed in order to determine the places of spills of various liquids, in particular fuel and lubricants. Even when armored vehicles explode, not all toxic substances burn out,” the scientist says.
According to the experts' conclusions, it will take decades to clean up Ukraine's fertile lands after the war.
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