Ukraine's grain farming amidst the conflict with Russia by The Plotline
Ukraine is one of the world's top ten wheat producing countries. In 2022 Ukraine's agricultural exports alone totaled $28 billion.
How is Ukraine's grain farming being impacted by the conflict? NASA's Earth Observatory produced a map looking at the location of Ukraine's crops cross referenced against the areas impacted by the war.
The conflict has taken a significant toll on the country's infrastructure, particularly in the eastern areas most affected by the conflict, where agricultural infrastructure has been destroyed.
The exact impact of the war on grain production hasn't been quantified, as the ability to collect data has been severely limited, but how might the conflict be impacting Ukraine's grain production and who is going to be impacted downstream?
Ukraine's agricultural data is organized by oblast. Oblasts are similar to states in the US.
Data sourced from the Ukrainian Government in 2021 who have been unable to collect statistics from Crimea or Sevastopol due to the conflict.
This map shows Ukraine's total grain production by oblast before the war started in 2021. The more green, the more grain that was produced there.
Using our forecasting tool, we can explore different scenarios and how they might impact grain production in Ukraine in the future. We use 2021 as our baseline year, 100% of normal production.
If the impact of the war continues to rise and farmers are unable to plant new crops, what if only half of the expected crop is harvested?
No one has quantified the true impact, but we have made it easy to see the outcomes of various scenarios. Use the sliders and buttons below to simulate different scenarios and see how they might impact future Ukrainian grain production.
Oblast
Harvested Area
Forecast
odesa Одеська
122,810
100%
dnipropetrovsk Дніпропетровська
113,920
100%
kharkiv Харківська
105,250
100%
zaporizhzhya Запорізька
101,100
100%
poltava Полтавська
96,590
100%
mikolayiv Миколаївська
94,040
100%
kirovohrad Кіровоградська
86,690
100%
vinnytsya Вінницька
86,530
100%
kherson Херсонська
80,890
100%
chernihiv Чернігівська
75,190
100%
sumy Сумська
66,640
100%
cherkasy Черкаська
66,070
100%
kyiv Київська
63,200
100%
donetsk Донецька
59,970
100%
khmelnytskiy Хмельницька
59,220
100%
zhytomyr Житомирська
52,970
100%
ternopil Тернопільська
45,600
100%
luhansk Луганська
36,210
100%
volyn Волинська
31,680
100%
lviv Львівська
29,700
100%
rivne Рівненська
29,630
100%
ivano-frankivsk Івано-Франківська
15,070
100%
chernivtsi Чернівецька
11,640
100%
zakarpattya Закарпатська
7,420
100%
Total Harvested:
1,538,030kg
Who is affected downstream?
Where does Ukraine's grain usually end up? In a normal trade year, the bulk of Ukraine's exports go to China, Africa, and Southeast Asian countries.
Let's take a look at how the small and high impact scenarios we explored earlier might impact the countries that import Ukraine's grain.
We analyzed COMTRADE data to determine which countries import Ukrainian grain. You can find the detailed methodology and source data in our methodology notebook.
The small impact scenario predicts that grain production will only be affected by ~15% from normal levels in 2022. Let's see which countries depend most on Ukraine for their grain imports.
The high impact scenario predicts that grain production will be affected by as much as 50% from normal levels in 2022.
Now it's your turn to make your own predictions. Use the slider below to simulate different scenarios and see how they might impact grain production in Ukraine in the future.