By Olha Hembik | 2025-01-17

WARSAW -- Ukraine is striving to restore its agricultural sector, which Russia has ravaged with rampant planting of land mines.

Before Russia's full-scale invasion of its neighbor, agriculture was Ukraine's third-largest source of income, after services and industry, according to a 2024 study by the European Parliament.

Agricultural products were Ukraine's biggest export, accounting for almost 41% of the country's overall exports in 2021, according to a US Department of Agriculture fact sheet.

In the 2019-2020 marketing year, the country was the world's second-largest exporter of all grain crops, trailing only the United States, Kyiv said at the start of 2021.

The damage has been immense after almost three years of war.

Ukrainian agriculture has suffered damage of $10.3 billion and losses of $69.8 billion, the World Bank said in a study from last February.

In 2020, Ukraine had 41.3 million hectares of land meant for agriculture -- 68.5% of the country's total area. It included 32.7 million hectares of arable land.

Now part of this land is seeded with land mines, contaminated with military waste or occupied by Russians.

Ukrainian farmers' losses

HarvEast, an agricultural holding company, has seen its assets occupied by Russian troops twice: in Donetsk province in 2014, and in Kyiv province in 2022. The producer lost 70% of its 132,000-hectare holdings.

Combat raged on HarvEast-leased land near Makariv, Borodyanka, Bucha and Irpin in Kyiv province. When the Russian army retreated, it mined this land.

"After the Russians fled from Kyiv province, we were left with 7,000 hectares that were mined. There were quite a few mines on 3,000 of those hectares," HarvEast CEO Dmitry Skornyakov told Kontur.

"We cleared the first 4,000 hectares pretty fast, but it took two years to clear the rest."

In total, HarvEast searched 10,000 hectares of land for mines.

As of December 2022, the company had suffered about $200 million to $250 million in damage.

Prometey, a grain trading conglomerate, said 2,136 hectares of its land was mined.

This land is in Mykolaiv province, which the frontline passed through. After the full-scale invasion, Prometey lost one-third of its assets. Only 12 of its 30 grain elevators are operating.

"In 2022, we lost all our profit, a lot of goods and four grain elevators in Zaporizhzhia. Four other grain elevators in the occupied territory were bombed and are in ruins," Rafael Goroyan, the chairman of Prometey's board of directors, told Kontur.

Last year, the company cleared mines from 60% of arable land in time for the winter wheat sowing season.

Preliminary figures put its financial losses from the war at 1.7 billion UAH (€39.2 million).

Demining progress

An urgent goal in coming years is to remove mines from agricultural land, according to Kyiv. The 2025 state budget has earmarked 1 billion UAH (€23.1 million) to do this.

"It is essential for us to demine the country in years, not decades," Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said January 8, following a meeting on the status of demining activities in 2024.

"The use of modern technology makes this possible," he added.

Last year, Ukraine's State Emergency Service (SES) and National Police units cleared almost 695 square km of territory and destroyed more than 133,000 mines and shells, according to a January 8 Cabinet of Ministers report.

"In total, since the start of the full-scale war, emergency services and law enforcement agencies have cleared about 2,100 square kilometers of Ukrainian land," the report said.

The area of potentially mined land in Ukraine has been reduced from 174,000 to about 139,000 square km, the report said.

"As of the end of 2024, 35,000 square kilometers of Ukrainian land have been surveyed, cleared or demined," said Minister of Economy Yuliia Svyrydenko, according to another January 8 statement from Kyiv.

"This is more than the area of Odesa region, the largest of all Ukrainian regions. About 17,000 square kilometers were returned to use in 2024."

Ukrainian mine clearing teams last year returned more than 285,000 hectares (2,850 square km) of agricultural land to farmers, after surveying more than 318,000 hectares (3,180 square km) of such land, the statement said.

"In accordance with the National Mine Action Strategy, we have set ourselves the goal of bringing 80% of the areas directly affected by the war back into use by 2033," Shmyhal said.

Privatizing mine clearance

Last year the state opened the market for humanitarian mine clearing to help farmers.

The job of clearing a mined plot of land is put up for auction on the Prozorro site, where operators compete for the work. The state covers the bill charged by the winner of the bid.

There are 73 certified mine action operators and almost 5,500 specialists already working in this business, according to Svyrydenko.

The state has allocated 1 billion UAH (€23.1 million) in its 2025 budget to a compensation program for clearing mines from farmland.

"Modeling shows that after the demining of these lands, it will take only 1-2 years to harvest grain, the profit from which will be commensurate [with] or even higher than the cost of demining," Svyrydenko said.

The agricultural company Nibulon was the first agricultural producer to receive the status of humanitarian mine clearance operator, and it is offering its services to the market.

The company owns a fleet of mine removal vehicles.

Last year, Nibulon cleared mines and munitions from 5,500 hectares of leased land.

That land amounted to 98% of the company's amalgamated holdings in Snihurivka, Mykolaiv province, which has 570 landowners.

"Before entering the market, the company performed humanitarian mine removal on its own land, and we made sure that we could do it well," said Mykhailo Rizak, Nibulon's director of government relations.

"Nibulon currently employs 12 trained mine clearance workers," Rizak told Kontur.

Innovative solutions

Among Nibulon's short-range plans are to create a platform for underwater mine clearance, and to integrate artificial intelligence to provide additional analysis while surveying mined territory.

Other large agricultural producers are increasingly relying on their own capabilities to remove mines.

"[HarvEast] and all the [producers] I know have done without state initiatives and worked directly with the Ukrainian military and the State Emergency Service of Ukraine. They're getting first-rate results," said Skornyakov of HarvEast.

"You can clear mines pretty fast, especially if you use technical equipment like special minesweepers. We're talking about taking a month to several years, depending on how many mines there are."

This year the government plans to survey another 31,000 square km of territory and create a register of contaminated territory.

It also pledges to incorporate new innovative mine clearing technologies, including drones and robots.